George
Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1866-1949) left a legacy of unique diversity and
the expression of an organic and coherent form of art. Besides his three
books, which present an original vision of God, the universe and mankind,
he also composed 200 musical pieces, created a ballet and an intriguing
set of dances and physical exercises called "Movements". Without doubt,
these are the main subject of his teaching system, he himself wanted to
be known simply as a "dance teacher". His challenging ideas such as "humans
are is asleep" and "remember yourself always and everywhere" have influenced
generations of men and women worldwide since his first appearance in Moscow
in 1913. .
Born in Alexandropol, which is at the moment the border
region between Russia and Turkey, since his youth he developed a deep
yearning for a special form of knowledge which he believed was rooted
in the old traditions and hidden somewhere on Earth. Educated in religion
and medicine, at the age of twenty he embarked on a trip that took him
to the most inaccessible places of the East. Doubtlessly, it was during
these trips that Gurdjieff made contact with monasteries, ethnic groups
and schools of perennial wisdom which compiled the vast repertoire of
choreographies, sacred gymnastics, dances and music.
On these trips he discovered that a great part of the
old knowledge was transmitted in the temples through music and dance.
The movements of these dances formed an alphabet that could be deciphered
by those who were prepared for it. Thus, in the evening, when the priests
and priestesses danced in the hall of the temple, the initiates could
read and interpret the truths that were implanted in the gestures and
the positions of the dances several thousand years ago and which flowed
from conscious sources, being transmitted in this way from generation
to generation.
When Gurdjieff saw these dances for the first time,
he was overwhelmed and affected by the precision and the purity of the
positions without yet understanding their meaning. After, he discovered
that the same laws that govern the cosmos and the whole of existence can
be found in the human psyque and its cellular structure and that through
certain movements and patterns strictly defined by the dancers, those
laws become visible and intelligible for those who know them.
Gurdjieff made a supreme effort to develop exercises which help to fortify awareness, the will and the power of attention. There were two periods noticeably different in the creation of his Movements. The first period, in which the Movements consisted of obligatory exercises, dervish dances, work-dances, dances for women and elaborated ceremonies, rituals and prayers. The Movements of this period contain noticeable ethnic and religious components. The second period, in which Gurdjieff organized classes of Movements almost everyday for different groups, transmitting new Movements and exercises. In this period he created what it is known as the Series of the 39 Movements, in which prevail gestures and the abstract positions presented in mathematical and geometric displacements.
