Gurdjieff´s Sacred Dances emphasize the necessity of associating the body with an inner, spiritual aspiration. This necessity has been forgotten, the body lives aside and we do not feel the limitation that this situation imposes on all the aspects of our life. We do not taste the latent possibilities in the body, we do not know how to listen to it or to make contact.

   It is in terms of opening to the sacred that we can understand the work with the Movements. This opening can free us of our mechanical way of living, while it reveals to us the essential aspect of our own nature, the natural state of the being that has been forgotten.

   In an interview, Mme. Solange Claustres, a personal student of Gurdjieff, describes the Movements and how they must be practiced as follows:

"These movements contain the law of the evolution of the human consciousness. They express how and in which direction this progression must go and, like so, they are a school in the real sense of the word. The body understands the Movements in its own way. We must develop a new attention in order not to enter in confusion due to its complex asymmetric patterns. We must use thought consciously to visualize the chronology of the dance. If we do so, we will be touched by a new vision. In this vision we will understand that we take part in the construction of great beauty, almost inconceivable. And in all this, the music is not just a support but an alive and integral part of inner work which happens during the movement."

   After a performance of Sacred Dances which took place in America, somebody asked Gurdjieff what place art and creative work occupied in his teaching. He answered:

"Present-day art is not necessarily creative. But for us art is not an aim but a means. Ancient art has a certain inner content. In the past, art served the same purpose as is served today by books-the purpose of preserving and transmitting certain knowledge. In ancient times they did not write books but expressed knowledge in works of art. We shall find many ideas in ancient art which has reached us, if we know how to read it. Every art was like that then, including music. And people of ancient times looked on art in this way. You saw our movements and dances. But all you saw was the outer form, beauty, technique. But I do not like the external side you see. For me, art is a means for harmonious development. In everything we do the underlying idea is to do what cannot be done automatically and without thought. Ordinary gymnastics and dances are mechanical. If our aim is a harmonious development of man, then for us, dances and movements are a means of combining the mind and the feeling with movements of the body and manifesting them together. In all things, we have the aim to develop something which cannot be developed directly or mechanically, which interprets the whole man: mind, body and feeling. The second purpose of dances is study. Certain movements carry a proof in them, a definite knowledge, or religious and philosophical ideas. In some of them one can even read a recipe for cooking some dish. In many parts of the East the inner content of one or another dance is now almost forgotten, yet people continue to dance it simply from habit. Thus movements have two aims: study and development."

   In conclusion, it is possible to say that the ideas, the music and the Movements of Gurdjieff represent the intellect, the heart and the body of the same vision and is a vital testimony of the work of a man who called himself a teacher of dance.