Dervish in Progress (DIP) is a contemporary dance terminology and teaching that appeals to the mind, body and emotions, includes many disciplines, and is based on the practice of whirling especially experienced in Sufism.

While science leaves no space for intuitions that are not based on proven facts, religion strolls around intuitions without searching for proof. However, moving freely between knowledge and intuition opens up a freer space for mental, physical, and emotional transformations that we can define as organic and original. Whirling offers the opportunity to experience such transformations. Unlike what is believed in Anatolia, whirling has been experienced in many different ways for centuries in various geographies.

As a 50+ years-old son of a tailor from the country, an urban engineer who has been dancing for 30+ years and a global artist who’s been whirling for 20+ years, Ziya Azazi, fed by the pleasure of integrating intuitive wanderings with knowledge, proposes the DIP terminology and teaching which is based on whirling, as an instrument that can be used in daily life.

DIP offers space and time for individuals who believe in free thought and understanding. At the same time, it gives them the opportunity to freely move, behave and feel while whirling.

During whirling, there are perception differentiation such as the inability of the eyes to see, the inability of the vestibular system to balance, the confusion of the sense of direction, and the rotation of the voice. These perception differentiations are caused by the physical acceleration and the resulting of centrifugal force. Exacerbated body temperature with increased blood circulation and respiration causes an increase in efficiency in organs, glands, fibres and muscles. In summary, it is for these reasons that the extraordinary electrical currents in the nervous system and the increase in the production of biochemicals have always fascinated people.

DIP, as a format that enables us to see ways to be constructive, therapeutic and reassuring in individual, family, social and universal contexts, has reached thousands of participants in more than 200 workshops in 35 countries under the leadership of Ziya Azazi to show the courage to take a conscious and intuitive step into the unknown, the unexplored, the forgotten and the undiscovered

Please click for Dervish In Progress photos  →