Full Description
In response to a scarcity of writings on the intersections between dance and Christianity, Dancing to Transform examines the religious lives of American Christians who, despite the historically tenuous place of dance within Christianity, are also professional dancers. Emily Wright details how these dancing Christians transform what they perceive as secular professional by transforming concert dance into different kinds of religious practices in order to express individual and communal religious identities.
Through a multi-site, qualitative study of four professional dance companies, Wright explores how religious and artistic commitments, everyday lived experience and varied performance contexts influence and shape the approaches of Christian professional dancers to creating, transforming and performing dance. Subsequently, this book provides readers with a greater awareness and appreciation for the complex interactions between American Christianity and dance. This study, in turn, delivers audiences a richer, more nuanced picture of the complex histories of these Christian, dancing communities and offers more fruitful readings of their choreographic productions.
Contents
Introduction
Making Christian Movements: Differentiation and Adaptation in Christianity from the Patristic Era to the Middle Ages
American Christianity from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century
Dancing as American and/or Christian in the Twentieth Century
'Let Us Praise His Name with Dancing': Ballet Magnificat! and the Transformation of Concert into Church
Servant Artists: Ad Deum Dance Company and the Transformation of Suffering
Befriending the Both/And: Dishman + Co. Choreography and the Transformation of the Choreographic Process
Dancing Divine Love: Karin Stevens Dance and the Transformation of the Spiritual Journey
Conclusion
