Praise God with Timbrel and Dance

I read once that the world was born with a dance, when God moved over the face of the waters. And since then, all of nature has responded in movement to God's creative love.

I have danced since I was 5. From first grade until college I logged many after-school hours before the glaring mirrors of fluorescent-lit studios, urging my flagging body through the leaps and turns of dance variations. As I learned its silent vocabulary, dance became a means of self-expression. Often, when alone, I would put music on the stereo and dance. At those times the melody would catch me up, and I would let my body write in space my emotions and fantasies.

After high school, I found less time and fewer opportunities for dance. And as I plunged into the new lifestyle and relationships at Sojourners four years ago, I reflected little on how dance might mesh with my new environment.

Months passed without my doing even a single pirouette. In worship I was learning to express myself in other ways: songs, spoken prayer, personal sharing. But as time went on, I realized that a spring of creativity within me had frozen. As I felt a fundamental part of myself slide into obscurity, I began to have qualms about being swallowed up in a tide of other community personalities and priorities.

My uneasiness was sharpened by the nagging fear that the elitist origins and history of classical dance were incompatible with my desire to identify with the poor. The longing to express an essential part of my person and an apprehension that such revelation would be unacceptable to a community like Sojourners--and even to God--did battle within me. But as time passed and I absorbed daily the steadiness of my sisters' and brothers' love and of God's care, I felt my self-imposed censorship subside.

And I was startled by God's grace. My hesitating words to one person or another about my background and desire to dance unearthed in them receptivity and enthusiasm. I found that people had wanted the element of movement and dance included in our worship for some time, and in fact, had already experimented with it.

I gathered with some others in the fellowship and together we learned simple folk-style dances for our Sunday morning community worship. Some time later I took a course in liturgical dance which unfolded new understandings of movement in worship.

I learned that dance is not something superimposed on a service but is a complement to the meaning of its songs, which are often limited by their abstract words. A congregation's understanding of what it means to have hope, for example, can be enriched by the sight of a dancer whose entire body is reaching outward, hands open, as if straining toward the gift of the future.

We now have an informal group of men and women who get together regularly to create and learn dances. Few of us have had much formal training, but all have a natural response to music and enjoy experimenting with movement. Our meetings have a celebrative air.

After a brief time of prayer to center us in God, we do exercises to prepare our bodies for the work ahead. In creating dances we generally use songs that are familiar to us. Often one person will demonstrate an idea for a movement or progression which the rest of us will modify or develop further as we build on the dance step by step. The styles of our dances grow from the personalities and backgrounds of their creators. For example, I am expanding my classical training by taking a class in jazz, and now we are finding its unfettered style reflected in our choreography.

We have discovered that dance is a vibrant communicator, forming new images which open fresh understandings of God. The description of God as our shepherd receives a new dimension in our worship as we not only sing the words but watch one dancer gently leading another, slowly, step by deliberate step, toward a group which waits with arms outstretched.

The motion of a dance can weave together the worship of an entire congregation. Even while sitting in metal folding chairs, which are the "pews" in our daycare center where we worship, people find their spirits dancing within as they watch the movement of a dance, and they can share wordlessly in the praise of others.

Dance is most meaningful when it emerges from and expresses the worship and vision of the whole fellowship. We are selective in our choice of music, trying to be sensitive to the spirit of a particular worship and helping to create and enhance its mood. Dances are not always upbeat; some can be stark, majestic, or even somber.

During Lent, for example, we did a dance about the cross, which was sustained and reverential. The dancers, slowly lifting their arms in the middle of the dance, acknowledged that the cross was our salvation. Their positions, hunched close to the floor at the opening and closing of the dance conveyed the submission and pain of the crucifixion.

Believing that the Lord is present in all his gathered people, the dancing and non-dancing alike, we try to free our dances from the realm of performance. The connection between dancer and congregation is the channel by which the movement communicates. We keep this relationship open by our inclusive gestures and by looking at the worshipers. Doing every step with precision is far less important than sensing the spirit of a dance, whether it be festive or prayerful, and letting that spirit come through our expressions and movements.

On Easter, 12 of us did a folk-style dance which can only be described as choreographed jubilation. I know I made at least one mistake in the midst of its rapid skips and whirls, and I am certain I was not the only one who was briefly befuddled. But embarrassment was impossible in the mood of shared rejoicing.

Even while dance has seemed to complement and express our worship, I still struggle with the place of the arts in our life together and their meaning in my life. Much artistic expression, particularly in dance, has been the privilege of the leisure classes. But more and more I am coming to understand how dance and other arts convey the universal responses of the human spirit to the world around and to God, and what a compelling and reconciling power they carry.

What began in me as a narrow channel of self-expression, limited to my own emotions and dreams, has become a means to touch the spirits of others. Together we are discovering the deep mystery of God's creation, the breathing of life into flesh, and its celebration in dance.

Lindsay Jane Dubs was a member of the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.