Word: ritualizes
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...North Africa. The term belly dancing is a misnomer adopted in the West in the 19th century: in ancient Middle Eastern societies, women would have been forbidden to show their midriffs. Most modern practitioners contend that belly dancing was designed not for sexual enticement but as a fertility ritual or for birthing ceremonies for and among women. There has also been speculation that the rotating pelvic movements arose from the action of stirring soup...
...just a few weeks, thousands of undergraduates at George Washington University will set their alarm clocks to wake up at dawn for the ghastly semiannual ritual known as preregistration. Students will battle it out on the web for seats in coveted courses for the spring 2003 semester. Churchgoers will pray, computer geeks will hack and others will simply hope for the best. That same day, undergraduates at Harvard College might be asked by a relative or a friend what courses they plan to take the next semester. Most of us will simply reply with a sigh of relief...
...theater ritual: the customers settle into their seats just before curtain time and hear a disembodied voice that warns members of the audience not to take photographs ... or phone calls. At the Neil Simon Theatre on New York's 52nd Street, as folks settle in to see the sassy, savvy, snazzy new Broadway musical "Hairspray," the announcer has a gentler way of telling the crowd to behave. He notes that the show "takes place in 1962, a time before there were cellular phones and beepers...
...stood out in the prim world of Canto-pop like Eminem at a church social. Nicholas Tse Ting-fung became an idol by smashing guitars onstage?almost a ritual for rockers in the West but a gesture of liberating anarchy in Hong Kong. A handsome guy whose mood could swing from brooding to furious in a heartbeat, Tse, 22, is the top pop star of his generation, and an actor whose promise every top director has hailed. He notched a score of hit CDs and more than a few famous lady friends, including Mainland mega-diva Faye Wong and Canto...
...implications of his breakthrough arealmost infinite. To have "one God that counts" instead of a constellation of gods who require occasional ritual appeasement, as Cahill notes in The Gifts of the Jews, means that Abraham's relationship to God "became the matrix of his life," as it would be for millions who followed. A universal God made it easier to imagine a universal code of ethics. Positing a deity intimately involved in the fate of one's children overturned the prevalent image of time as an ever cycling wheel, effectively inventing the idea of a future. Says Eugene Fisher, director...