Pilgrimage

In dance literature, a pilgrimage step is sometimes referred to as a sequence of steps in which one or two steps are taken back after several steps forward. Step sequences are also known under this name in meditative dance .

The expression pilgrim step in the sense of “two steps forward, one step back” is used - often sarcastically - in connection with processes in which progress is repeatedly interrupted by (sometimes only supposed) steps backwards. In a figurative sense, it also refers to certain technical processes in rolling steel and in civil engineering that work with forward and backward movements, the pilgrim step process .

Origin of the term

The "pilgrimage" is traced back to the Echternach jumping procession, in which supposedly two steps forward and one backward were taken. The term was apparently coined by observers of the procession - for example the engineer Franz Reuleaux with the "pilgrim step process" attributed to him - and developed into a popular cliché. It in no way corresponds to today's practice of the ritual jumping dance practiced in the procession, in which one only leaps forward, one step to the left, then one step to the right. An old name for it was tripudium "triple jump", "three-step dance"; the term “pilgrim step” was and is not customary, especially since the participants in the procession are to be addressed more as pilgrims than pilgrims .

Even the Düsseldorf pastor Anton Joseph Binterim in 1848 rejected the series of steps described in the literature available to him (3 forwards, 2 backwards or 3 forwards, 1 backwards or 2 forwards, 1 backwards); he himself observed in Echternach that the "jumpers" were moving forward by taking three or four steps to the right and then as many to the left, but not jumping backwards; the impression of jumping back arises at most when the procession is jammed, when a crowd prevents progress.

Curt Sachs wants to identify the old origins of the dance step "in the Roroima region after the Orinoco", in North America, Indonesia, India and Denmark, but without dating them, furthermore in pavans of the 16th and 17th centuries and in modern times "in the South Arabian Sibwana dance" . Sachs' interpretation of the Echternach pilgrimage, according to which the procession "laboriously approaches the bones of St. Willibrord and circles them", seems just as arbitrary as his claim that in other Catholic processions, "the incense-waving altar boys often followed a certain, recurring step pattern . "

Pilgrimage with Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe uses the term to mean the normal walking of a pilgrim:

"Renunciation sanctifies war and pilgrimage.
It drives you to suffer because the Most High suffered."

- JW von Goethe, prologue for the opening of the Berlin theater in May 1821

Individual evidence

1. ^ Curt Sachs: A world history of dance. Reprint of the Berlin 1933 edition, Olms Verlag, Hildesheim-New York 1976, ISBN 3-487-06086-8 , p. 119; Felix Hoerburger: Folk Music Research . Laaber Verlag, Laaber 1986, ISBN 3-89007-106-6 , p. 12.44.110
2. ↑ Evangelical church service book. Agenda for the EKU and the VELKD. Verlagsgemeinschaft Evangelisches Gottesdienstbuch, Berlin 1999, pocket edition, ISBN 3-7461-0141-7 , p. 229.
3. ↑ http://m.schwarzwaelder-bote.de/inhalt.nusplingen-landfrauen-verlassen-kirche-im-pilgerschritt.4527f394-01f1-448b-94ce-3cde6de86d1d.html
4. ↑ http://www.gifhorner-rundschau.de/lokales/Gifhorn/im-pilgerschritt-auf-dem-ehepfad-id518669.html
5. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Sermon , see page 6 - The statement that the people in the monastery meditated for hours in pilgrimage in the cloister has not been proven.
7. ↑ Exchange practices the pilgrimage. (No longer available online.) In: Focus Online . Archived from the original on May 6, 2016 ; accessed on October 14, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ "the so-called pilgrim step, known above all from the jumping procession in Echternach near Aachen ... In other Catholic processions as well, the incense-wielding altar boys often follow a certain, recurring step pattern: the left foot steps forward, the right foot is drawn, the left step back ; then vice versa. It is the old 'pilgrimage' - older than acolytes, pilgrimage and the Catholic Church ”, Curt Sachs: A world history of dance. Reprint of the Berlin 1933 edition, Olms Verlag, Hildesheim-New York 1976, ISBN 3-487-06086-8 , p. 119.
9. ↑ Stahl und Eisen: Zeitschrift für das Deutsche Eisenhüttenwesen , Vol. 81 (1961), p. 1294.
10. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from June 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Echternach jumping procession homepage. 
11. ^ Anton Josef Binterim: De saltatoria, quae Epternaci quotannis celebratur, supplicatione cum praeviis in choreas sacras animadversionibus. Tractatum historicum. Düsseldorf 1848, p. 18 f.
12. ^ Curt Sachs: A world history of dance. Reprint of the Berlin 1933 edition, Olms Verlag, Hildesheim-New York 1976, ISBN 3-487-06086-8 , p. 119.