Not for sale.

Last week I took a master class at the Overture Center from modern dancer/choreographer Ron Brown. His movement is a fusion of traditional African dance, hip-hop and contemporary modern. He was a beautiful dancer and the movement lush and innovative. I was totally captivated. More than the movement, though, I was taken by his genuine investment in the meaning of his choreographic choices. Brown spends time every year in Africa learning and practicing all of the native dances. He kept reiterating the importance of the spirit of the dance, and the fact that the moment we put movement on stage, we've started to sell what we do and it has lost the spiritual element.

I see this problem so often in American dance today - perhaps the reason why I love both modern dance and dance therapy is that they seek the meaning in the movement vs. the virtuosity. The movement is about the raw essence of the body in motion, not about the tricks and glamour of it all.

I kept thinking about this all weekend. Friday night was the biannual dance at church, which, by the way, is awesome. I watched nearly 500 people of all ages dancing together and was very aware of the contrast between those lost in the movement and those aware of every step they took - the fact that they were indeed "on stage" as a dancer.

And then at church yesterday, the sermon talked about the fact that we as people are much more apt to believe what we see and experience as opposed to learned argument. To me this totally tied in to what Ron Brown had to say: when we put our faith "on stage" so to speak, it loses the essence of the spiritual. When we throw scripture or Biblical teaching around without backing up what we preach by the way we live, the actions are totally empty. We can't expect to make any impact unless the things we claim to believe are supported by the way we live our lives.