Thinking

Tonight, I had the priveledge of joining in the "Creative Worship" time with the older students at the studio I teach at. Every month or so, for about an hour, they gather in the big studio and have free worship-dance time. No given combinations, no assumptions about what you are doing, just time to take a theme or a great song and dance for God. It's probably the best application of the dance training they are recieving, since it's a Christian studio. They aren't just there to learn ballet, in order to get into a great company someday, they are also there to learn about God and how to use their ballet training for Him. This was the first time I got to see these kids dance this way (this is a rather new event at the studio), and it made me think a lot. Some of the bigger points:

These kids are getting to be great little ballerinas. Let them improv, and they pull out every step, every move, every movement they've ever done. They tap into such a wealth of the vocabulary they have been learning. It's impressive to see them making stuff up that's good, not just doing the same arm movement over and over again cause they can't think of anything else to do.

In counterpoint to that, I struggle a lot with "sacred" dancing. There is so much stylistic repetition, so much predictable movement, so much of the same lifting your arms and spinning around. Like God isn't praised by the 10,000 other movements and combinations of movements you can do with your body. And ballet-trained sacred dancers are even worse. They do an arabesque, and because they always think about it in class, they think about how high it is, how long a line, how placed the arms. They can't do a turn without remembering to turn out and spot the mirror. This leads to my next thought.

The "theme" of this thing tonight was truth. That was pretty much the whole lead-in, just Truth. So is dancing the academic and square way you are expected to for an audience really being true to the movement for the sake of worship? I understand that a beautiful arabesque can be a pleasing act of worship to God, but when you are let free to do whatever the Spirit leads you to do, and you bust right into tombe-pas de burre-prepare-pirouette like in the last 150 classes you've taken, is that being truthful to the joy of freedom in moving for God? The need for a technique in dance is a given, you can't just do whatever you want all the time cause you will never looked trained or practiced, but worship should be about unfettered release into the presence of God, not stringing together tricks you've learned.

I was really impressed by some of the kids, regardless of all my struggling thoughts. I have had a personal hand in each one of their lives and training in the last 3 years. They've grown so much, learned so much, improved and matured so much. But did I really have anything to do with that, or did those things just come along naturally in the course of their growing up? Is that leg higher because I helped it get there, is that turn cleaner because I picked at it, is that movement more meaningful because I pushed for that? Or did these amazing kids just grow up while I watched? It was a very odd mixture of pride and the feeling of utter uselessness.

This is only a smattering of the things I thought about during this worship session. I also got some time to ponder if I'm living out the truth I claim to believe, if the simplicity of that truth is reflected in the simple parts of my life, if becoming an adult means I need to know exactly what Truth is inside and out. And I got to pray for my kiddos, who I've worked and prayed for and loved for 3 years, who I have to leave in a month. I'm really glad I got to participate in this, it was quite an hour.