The Power of Dance
by Angel Lee
Shall I let love and love let me Entrust to hands pure honesty Shall I arise though scarred my face To stand and dance without a trace Of fear.
(Heather Clark)
The body doesn’t lie; it cannot even if we tried. A subtle twitch of a muscle, a held breath, the gaze of the eyes. The body responds to any & every trigger honestly (just think about what your body does when someone scares you from behind), often failing to hide the very emotions we try to conceal.
The power of dance is found in this honesty of the body to express. We were made to dance; we were created by a creative God to embody movement as part of the expression of our being. The body has the ability to communicate joy, pain, excitement, confusion & everything in between. It is able to create shapes, images & paint pictures like only the human body can. It stirs the imagination & brings the audience into another world altogether.
The world understands the power of dance, so much so that it is used prolifically in most areas of society today - the education sector, commercial sector, entertainment sector & even just in communities (I really mean void decks & community centres). The world has an understanding of the impact & power of dance that the church at large seems to be unfamiliar with. When it comes to dance, I’ve seen churches fumble at how to even begin, how to educate their congregations & how to effectively use dance in ministry.
I believe that dance opens up a new realm of worship & connecting with God in the Church. The potential of dance for evangelism, missions, praise & worship, intercession, visual enhancement & in the prophetic needs to be explored & tapped into. Dance in the world needs to be reclaimed for the glory of God. It was made by God, for God & for His Kingdom’s purpose.
What would it look like for the church to send out mission teams that preach the Gospel through dance, breaking language barriers? What would it look like for services to be interlaced with prophetic dance to Scripture being read? What if dancers danced & healing took place? What if the Church raised up dancers, excellent in skill & heart, & sent them out to the professional dance industry? How then, would dance in the world look like?
A worship & prophetic dancer, Angel will be joining us next year as a pioneer of Awaken Generation’s Dance Stream. She graduated from LASALLE college of the arts in 2013 with a BA(Hons) in Dance (First Class) specialising in contemporary dance. Her biggest dream is to see a group of technically excellent dancers minister across the nations with dance as its primary mode of sharing The Gospel.