Dancing to The Spirits

I wrote a post on Different Types Of Prays And Rituals To The Ghost back in March 2007, when I was having a lot of problems posting my post, especially the posts on ghost story. Crazy as this may sound, I had to pray to the ghost spirits asking for permission before translating and writing each post, and even went to the extreme of thinking about performing a spirit dance as I recalled whilst living in Thailand that people would dance naked for the ghost, Issan people would dance and sing for the ghost, and the Thai southerners would perform a Nora Rong Khru Chao Ban Ritual, which Nora is a performance tradition of dance, drama, and ritual for the ghost. But luckily, I didn’t have to do any of that because the root of the problem was a glitch in the software and the WordPress technician was able to fix my problems.

Dancing to the Spirits is a ritual that people would perform to satisfy the ghost if their wishes were granted. At first glance this dance might appear simple and very easy to perform but don’t be deceived because you actually have to know the moves such as hands and fingers gestures, as the rhythm of Thai tradition music is not something that you can just move your body around anyway you want.

Below are videos of spirit dance and there is an actually profession in Thailand, where a professional dancer would perform a dance ritual for the spirits, assuming that you had asked the ghost for something and your wishes were granted, and instead of performing the dance yourself, you’d hire one of these professional dancers to dance for you. Of course, if you learn the moves, you might be able to perform the dance ritual to the spirits yourself. What kind of wish would people ask from the ghost you might wonder, I believed the number one wish is to win the lottery.

• Thai Spirit Dance

• Dancing to the Spirits

Video description: we were taken by Mrs Lan, a Thai friend, to her sisters house, where the neighbours were joining her to ‘Dance to the Spirits’ Sunglasses on at first to dance to the spirits of the dead, then after a quick change of clothes and sunglasses off to dance to the spirits of the living. It went on for 12 hours during which much Mekhong Whisky was drunk and the local people enjoyed themselves as only Thai’s know how.