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Related to the protective function of the previously mentioned labyrinthine "threshold designs" is the ritualistic funerary procession of the Truia, which originated with the ancient Trojans and is related to maze dances. The procession’s "mazelike movements ... were intended to keep evil influences from the grave and at the same time to admit those authorized to visit it" (Bord, 59). This procession is believed to be the subject of the narrative depicted upon an Etruscan terracotta wine jar that dates from the late seventh century BCE. A large labyrinth, labeled "TRUIA", is depicted alongside the procession.
Maze and circle dances are closely related to the symbol of the labyrinth as the movement of the dancers is intended to suggest the movement of going through a labyrinth or maze. Maze dances are said to have originated with the previously mentioned Geranos or "Crane Dance" that Theseus, Ariadne, and the liberated Athenian youths performed on the Island of Delos. They celebrated their liberation by performing a circle dance that imitated the windings of the labyrinth. As their movements reenacted Theseus’s successful mission into, and back out of, the Cretan Labyrinth, their participation in the "representative initiation is not merely announced, but is symbolically conferred on them" (Jaskolski, 59).
One description of the dance, emphasizing its spiral nature, reads "the dancers, having danced into the labyrinth from right to left, the direction of involution and death, turn ‘round in the centre and, following following their leader dance out again, now in the opposite direction, that of evolution and birth" (Bord, 60). Another interpretation of the Crane Dance suggests that it imitates the perceived annual course of the sun, that the "sinuous lines of the labyrinth which the dancers followed in their evolution may have represented the ecliptic, which is the sun’s apparent annual path in the sky" (Bord, 61). This interpretation is supported by the common association of the crane with the sun as well as the spiral’s role as a symbol of the perceived course of the sun.
Other maze dances have also been interpreted as having symbolized the ecliptic. One example is that of the pelota-ball dance or game that was performed each Easter on the maze in Auxerre Cathedral in France. A ball, or pilota, was handed, beginning with the dean, along a line of canons (who danced in a long chain around the maze) until the pilota circulated back to the dean. The symbolism of the Pelota Dance has been described as having represented "the apparent path or dance of the sun throughout the year, its ‘Passion’, and the corresponding Passion of creation, analogous to the path of the incarnate Christ, his death, burial and resurrection as the Christ-Sun at Easter"(Bord, 95).
In Britain and elsewhere, traditional May Day festivities included running through turf and stone mazes and performing maze dances such as the British Morris Dance. This dance is believed to have originated as a fertility dance that celebrated the simultaneous death of winter and the birth of spring. In fact, "by analogy with a great number of myths, rites, and ceremonies of ancient and modern races, some anthropologists have been lead to the conclusion that ... labyrinth dances are only particular espressions of a very early and widely diffused ceremonial associated with the awakening of nature in spring, after its winter sleep, or the release of the imprisoned sun after its long captivity in the toils of the demon of winter" (Matthews, 160).
The reawakening of nature, the birth (or rebirth) of spring, and the release of the imprisoned sun all