LEAD ARTICLE: theology of dance

by MILTON AYLOR

 

First presented at Framemakers Symposium on Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, Daghdha Dance Company, Limerick, Ireland, 30.5.- 6.6.2005

I
Dancing is what we should want not only our feet to do, but also our thoughts. Let us be interested in thinking in a dancing way – dancing thoughts – turning and twisting and leaping in our thinking. Let’s begin with leaping – taking leaps, jumps in our thinking. Not how do I get from here to there, but rather, being here, I act there through projection, through imagination. I jump, I leap, from here to there and thus I am still here but now from there to where I have jumped in my projection, in my act of imagination. Why is it so difficult for us to overcome the physical fixation of place through the act of imagination in which we jump to another place from which we then look back to where we still are really? To imagine being somewhere else is to qualify where you are, to place the given now in relativizing relationship to the wanted or risked not-yet of our projection where we can and do imagine ourselves actually being. Without doing this in some way there is no sympathy, no empathy, no solidarity, no being loved and thus no appreciation and lastly no joy. We jump in our thinking all the time really; we just don’t think about it very much. We turn and twist in the same way in our thinking, so thinking is a kind of dance anyway.

Theology is the study of God and in this time, which we call postmodern, it is a most demanding discipline indeed, because the whole of metaphysics in which classical theology is conjugated has become a structure of being composed of metaphors, of open symbols requiring energetic participation. To believe is a creative act; it is the creative act. There is belief only when you or I believe, but our act of believing is only possible because there is already a pattern, a literature, series of steps and postures called liturgy, a daring called prophecy and a priestly presence of mediation and listening love in forms of confession and healing hope. Words in which we wait and want are the language-world of worship. Theology itself has become a dance. Theology is pattern, steps, leaps, twirls and twists – a danced circle defining a middle and midst around which we dance in worship, surrounding the one before whom we wish to be, surrounding that one with our circling attention.

The thrill of vitality is the reason for dance; we dance to feel life, to know and celebrate our aliveness. The planned and performed pattern which is dance is also liturgy and the performative language of preaching. Dancing theology fits the situation of postmodern total subjectivity just fine. We think in jumps and speak in steps. When we think of dance as performed poetry, we come close to the inner meaning of ritual as that life-basis which makes community-creating communication possible. It is, however, the case that all these things like liturgy and ritual serve the status-quo and we meet here to think and talk about change. There is this feeling that some, indeed many, of us have that something is slowly and quietly taking shape amongst us in myriad little ways. A new synthesis, a fervent vision, a subtle swipe at the triumphant arrogances of our time – an ecology of encouragement and encounter. The meeting of minds and sharing of appreciative inadequacies brings strangers together to gather well-meant impressions into conversations about doing things differently, quite literally for a change. Change is essential to vitality and growth; change is also the honesty of limited life, of mortality. Is it because we ourselves cannot help but change, that we resist change in our circumstances, so as to at least in them to have the illusion of permanence? There may be, however, a more basic reason for our reluctance to embrace change, namely our realization that what is important to us depends on us. What happens to our projects, our worlds, when we dare to do things differently? Can this not be a kind of treason, a kind of betrayal? For those on whom worlds depend it is risky, even costly to just do it differently for the sake of intriguing but insecure heuristics. Quite a different perspective is possible if one is of the opinion or even of the intimation that something new is emerging. Is this not the possibility and moral mandate for an aesthetics of change? Something new, qualitatively new, not just novel, emerging from the encounter of various insights and experiences, the vague outlines of a pattern, the feeling of common forms of perception in the solidarity of frustration and postponement. Newness seems to hover over us, an ungraspable horizon promising a comprehension we can still only guess at and long for. We want an ecology that is a house, an oikos to live in, to be safe in, a place of light and warmth, a place to dance.

Once in our history, it was pedagogic practice to portray the dance of death.. We are here to think about the dance of life and to do that in a way which enables an ecology of encouragement and encounter as the comforting context of thinking about change as aligning ourselves with the emerging ecology. Emergence becomes visible when the outline of the pattern can be seen. Prophets are seers; they see what is coming before others do. This seeing, which is prophecy, is theory, the vision which organizes the facts. Embracing a new vision does not entail denying or neglecting facts, on the contrary! The aesthetics of change can mean that which is manifest in change or that which is wrought through such aesthetics. The aesthetic dimensions of change are attributes of change, but the change wrought through aesthetics is something quite different. The aesthetics with which we are dealing here are those which are attributes of the emerging ecology, but then they are also aspects of the dynamics through which the change in question is effected. The dance not only celebrates what is happening; it also thereby produces what is to be celebrated, namely the change in question. To dance so as to make perceptible the emerging ecology is a rewarding responsibility. To watch such dancing is to win perspective.

From the theology of dance to the dance of theology is one of the ways the emerging ecology of encouragement and encounter is changing the self-understanding of our disciplines. Instead of just looking at the project, we learn to look at the projecting. God is not the doer and not the done; God is the doing. It is important to know this, so that we know what we are really saying when we say: God be with you. The dance is in the dancing, is it not? Believing as a or even the creative act is achieved through imagination as seeing so prophetically that such seeing produces proleptic effect; the vision is now. The eschatological ethics of the Apostle Paul are nothing other than this imaginative behavior whereby one lives now on the basis of what will become clear and confirming. Dancing theology is the doing of theology as existential poetry interpreting life as willed purpose and satisfying effort. The emerging ecology is a theological perspective and proposes that the sacred has its rightful and necessary place in the political preference for secularism. That which is truly sacred is untouchable and lethal toward every vulgar attempt at possession – what then are the untouchables of the emerging ecology, what warning is there for the wary? To speak of the commandments of the emerging ecology is to consider the prohibitive aspects of that holiness or sacredness which obtains in the new ecology. Our world is broken and violated and increasingly overwhelmed and provoked into violent reaction. The new ecology is not for any pristine state of nature or innocence of humankind, but rather for a world polluted and poisoned, a humanity brutalized and brutish. The new ecology is about redemption and restoration, about repentance and renewal. Dancing theology is about judgment and critique, about the confession of our crimes and the hope of learning our lessons. Judgment is change – redemption is change – repentance is change – hope is change. Pelagius was right on the matter of grace and not Augustine, who taught us, not only that we could not change, but even made it unnecessary. Being together here on the home turf of Celtic Christianity, let’s feel close to our much maligned friend, Pelagius, and say simply: we can change and we must change and we want to change: to change from murdering the earth and misusing each other while musing about how much concrete carnage is acceptable as the price of Americanizing the world. If we can dance, we can change, because dance is change. To watch the dance is to fill our eyes with the charm and chance of change – those who dance call the world to renewal.

II
Dance is not just entertainment – I suppose all or at least most dancers know that, but it is the common assumption of most people who watch dancing, I think. We may occasionally intuit that the dancing we see is something of an enticement to follow such observable feelings as are the stuff of some dancing, that the dancers are into something more than amusing acrobatics. The problem of how entertainment is destroying much of sensate life in the first world is rather beyond the scope of our present consideration, but it is most definitely involved in it. Dance is the description of systemic reality. Eco-systems are patterns and so are dances. The interconnectedness of steps reproduces the nexus of life. A dance is a system. Dancing can be a conscious way of reflecting upon the eco-systems which compose our world, a seeing of systems, a following of patterns. To follow a pattern is to be patterned, to become part of that pattern and so to experience oneself in interconnectedness, in rhythmic relationship or static tension. To flow within a system, to bend oneself to fit the pattern, to guide the steps which lead the body being – this is all a way of co-operating by corresponding to the patterns of reality. To dance in this sense is to ritualize reality. To do this knowingly is energy plus epistemology; it is physical understanding. Dancing can reflect the systems of reality within which and by virtue of which we live. It is only by becoming aware of the systemic nature of reality that we can escape the trap of politicizing ecology into fascism. To know you are part of something can keep you from being swept off your feet and overwhelmed by the context of your concrete existence. To use the force of totality is exactly what totalitarianism is. To be personally not a permanent part of reality is the right of mortality and thus the freedom to be within but not belong to systemic reality. To be within reality, but to belong to God is what belief is all about, especially the mythology of creation. Our mortality can be our maturity; it is our place and prerogative of consciousness in systemic reality, in being. To be, not forever, but for now – to know this is how we are human and it is the reason for love. When we dance, we describe systemic reality, within which we are, but to which we do not belong and so we ritualize reality to respect its inescapable authority and assert our freedom, at the core of which there is no substance, but only the primal act of love. By dancing we can rehearse reality and revel in our freedom.

III
Dance is discipline and the freer its form, the stricter its discipline. The art of dancing requires intensive and comprehensive training: it must be learned; it must be taught. Disciplina is the secret of all art and the finest accomplishment of thinking. When the dance reflects the systems of reality, it can only do so through adequate technique enabling the expression of eco-systems and that means the physical ability to construct channels and connections. The moving body assumes forms and develops designs of motions which are deliberate and demanding. The choreographic sketch is a map of motion and to be able to perform its requirements and suggestions takes both mental and physical competence. Belief is also composed of disciplina. When theologically aware and adept persons see dancing, they recognize how they believe. Reflecting systemic reality through physical expression in the learned discipline of deliberate movement and posture is dance theologically conceived and applicable to the interests of liturgy. Whether dervishes or the Shiva, swaying hasidics or shaking puritans, gyrating Africans or ever so proper processions, the many forms of dance in the world of religion all attest to the fact that there is in the sensitivity of the sacred that moment which calls for physical expression and stimulates the thoughtful to work out and teach the patterns of piety.

Choreography is the theory of the discipline of dance. To plan the pattern, to direct the steps, to shape the motion, these are the elements of the doableness of discipline. To train the body so as to clear and concentrate the mind is the task of the training essential to dance. Dance is never an accident; it is always the deliberate act.

Just as dance is the reflection of systemic reality, it can also be the expression of sacred imagination. The configurations of dance can show the unexpected combinations of motion and posture which put us on to new ideas and into unsettledness. Dance can beckon; it can call and address secret longing. Dance can be wonderfully subversive, which makes it capable of the sacred. To turn around what cannot be touched is to encircle the sacred, to move in the eternal circle around that holy center of the unspeakable, the ineffable. The center is silence and it is empty, but it is vital; it can vibrate – it can pulse. The center of the circle is where God is. God is the center of the dancing circle.

IV
That dance has become a basic of meditation is well known and widely practiced. Such dance is not a matter of watching, but of dancing oneself and doing so as one not trained or talented, but just interested and willing. When I dance in the privacy of my room, with nobody, absolutely nobody else around, I do what feels right and appropriate to the feelings which I want to express and sometimes I even try something which I think will teach me some new feelings. There are lots of people, who do not really know how to dance, who do nevertheless, as best they can, often in hidden privacy. Could not such dancing be personally designed? Could not someone who does know how to dance design the personal dance of the someone who wants to dance meditatively alone? When it is true, which I think it is, that movement is important, indeed crucial, to thinking, then whether yoga or the Irish jig the dance can produce mental excitement. To move motorizes thinking. Meditative dancing is the private privilege of many people and some, perhaps most, of these people would like to do better what they do so happily, namely dance alone. Might there not be a new and needed field of coaching here? Personally, I would love to have a dancing coach who would design my personal dance and even help me make the updating changes in my dance, which would be appropriate to new insights and enabling to the development of disciplines which I need and want. Sometimes it is very important and quite difficult to make something clear to ourselves, something we need to learn, to understand, to accept, to reject or avoid and then it can be simply super to put such “making it clear to myself” into the molding medium of dance. If a sedentary Calvinist can make this discovery, then surely anybody can. Perhaps we will not be able to learn to believe in God within our life, unless we dare to dance. The private dance of personal meditation could be an interesting development of expanding the usefulness of dance knowledge; we could begin to experiment with a choreography of consciousness, which might even develop into the dance of conscience. My own dance – what a marvelous possibility! Who could help me? Who could design the dance I need, the dance I want and do that just for me, just so I too could dance as best as I can. A center of dance could be a place for the designing and learning of the personal dance.

V
It makes a lot of sense to think of co-operation as the source of consciousness, to consider co-operative interaction to be the dynamic through which human thought, in the brain and between persons, develops. If it is also the case, that only humans have rhythm, as Walter Freeman contends, then dance is a most basic form of what human consciousness is all about: co-operation and co-ordination. It is, I suppose, even possible to consider conflict to be the negative form of co-operation. While I certainly do not want to in any way place the importance of private, individual dancing in question, it is obvious that this little thought-adventure we are engaged in must come to the conclusion that the dance of the group is of primary importance. It is in the dance of the group that co-operation celebrates its generative originality as the dynamic enabling of communication and community. Learning to participate in a dance, however simple, is the real basis of both personal and institutional communication competence. Getting people to do things, to behave constructively, to care, to be responsible – all this and such like are the stuff of co-operation through communication. If we need to un-learn our destructive living-habits, and we most certainly do, then we require a repatterning of our way of living, because change cannot just be piled on top of what is already there, for we must unlearn what is to be replaced through that which we want to be different. Change necessarily involves re-placement; we change one thing for another – we change from one place to another – we change our patterns and our priorities, if we really are serious about change. Change involves giving-up, getting-over, doing-away-with and going-beyond, which can also mean going-back. The neuroscientist, Walter Freeman, is convinced that consciousness springs from action, co-operation and rhythm – well, if that does not establish dance as a primal form of the genesis of consciousness, I can’t imagine what might. Dancing as a way of learning and un-learning means dance as a medium of change. As a Calvinist, I find this idea both fascinating and frightening, because the Augustinian basis of the Reformation wrought an intellectualist rejection of the role of sensuality in the matters of faith, which, while understandably emergent from Augustine’s own biography and not completely congruent with Luther’s earthiness did obviate the productive possibilities of sensualist liturgy. I regret this, but find it quite understandable and perhaps the historically unavoidable price that had to be paid for the development of the critical stance of the protestant perspective. As someone who is a product of puritan persuasions, I find it also to be incumbent upon me, as such a person, to be readily and informedly appreciative of the sensual basics, which seem to be finding recognition and employment today. Yoga or not, we cannot continue to despise and destroy the natural/material essential basis of our life. This is not only the convincing lesson of ecology; it is also the joyous discovery of increasing numbers of people in the first-world, that the hallowed divorce of the mental from the physical is the effective crippling of life and that there is no independent reality of the mental apart from or superior to the physical. This is what makes the project of a monistic understanding of the world so very right and necessary and here I am thinking of Gregory Bateson.

If today we are evolving theologically into a perspective of integration and prioritizing prophecy, in which God is no longer out there, but intensely within and among us, we have the interpretive task of turning our vast collection of transcendence-language into the poetry of existence. To do this, we are going to have to do more than think learnedly and speak persuasively and listen carefully, all of which is indispensable but not sufficient to the task. We are going to have to learn physical patterns which will enable us to unlearn what we want to overcome, namely our subjection of physical reality to the supposedly superior claims of abstract reason, including mathematics as the realm of eternal truth and instrument of our quantitative technological omnicompetence. The more we understand of the world to which we not only belong, but actually ourselves are, the more we are driven to the comprehension, that our bifurcated history betrays the interdependent integrity of our actual existence. It is not the case that Bateson’s perspective opens the back door to the apologetic ambitions of religion, but rather, it seems to me, it is the case that a monistic understanding of reality can serve the ethical interests of religion quite well. Not pantheism, not panenthism and certainly not theism or deism, but rather theanthropology as man’s rootedness in not-only physical reality.

To think, we must move in co-operative pattern-making actions, which effect change not on top of what is already there, but by replacing what is to be rejected with what is to be preferred, by un-learning to learn or because we have learned. The theology of dance today is the dance, which is theology that is not just thinking, not just language, but embodied movement producing consciousness in and for community. It is time to dance again in Church – not just watching, but swaying yourself with the Spirit.

VI
In conclusion, I would like to briefly consider the possibility of interpreting the Eucharist as a dance. Crossan’s investigation of the origin of the Passion Narrative involves the speculative probability of the liturgical development of women’s mourning rituals. Soggen’s commentary work involves the hypothetical reconstruction of sacred drama. The First Testament is full of dance and among the times of man’s life as recited in the Book of Ecclesiastes, dance has its honored place and self-understood time. David and all Israel dance before the Lord and the choreography of the temple is the home-ground of various visions and dramatic depictions in the Hebrew Scriptures. The narrative form of much of scripture is rooted in ritualized recitation and this applies particularly to the Passion Narrative, including the christologized observance of Passover, which becomes the Lord’s Supper and is institutionalized as sacred meal, so that the Christians also have what the mystery religions had, as Milito of Sardis makes so fascinatingly clear. We understand now a good bit about how the interpretation of Jesus’ death or disappearance on the basis of the interpretation of Israel’s scriptures took place, but we still are in the first stages of understanding the ritualistic beginnings of what became the Eucharist. How to celebrate the Eucharist is not a matter for official church hierarchies or bureaucracies to decide – this is already being decided by free-form ecumenical Christians in informal experimentation. In this situation, it is most appropriate to think about the possibility of celebrating the Eucharist, which has become the central ritual of ecumenical Christianity, of celebrating the Eucharist as a dance. There are already many dance elements in most forms of worship, including the passing of the peace amongst hygiene-conscious Christians who are rather reluctant to indulge in the Holy Kiss. A gentle circle of holding hands and taking a few simple steps would be quite enough for most of us, I should think. This would be a physical act into which the whole of the Eucharistic theology could be packed as a reflection of the ecology of encounter and encouragement. The Eucharist is an ecology and it could be danced. May the Lord of the dance bless us all.

published 22 February 08