Our Music of the Week is a special performance and ancient dance from the historical region of Circassia in the North Caucasus. The Circassians, or Adyghe people as they prefer to call themselves, are known for their legendary beauty. There are only about 800,000 of them remaining in today’s Russian republics of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia.

This traditional dance is the Circassian Royal Wedding dance and displays the grace and magic of what may encompass thousands of years of cultural and spiritual identity. Circassian dance has a lot in common with ballet, while the female dancers seem “untouchable” in their beauty and elevated nobility.

The wedding performed here, seeming to be more than a human celebration, is reminiscent of a heavenly assembly of crowned spiritual beings—floating above the ground—engaged in a “hieros gamos,” a sacred marriage of eternal souls.

Spellbinding.