"To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful." (Agnes De Mille.)
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul." (Martha Graham.)
Ruth St. Denis says "Dance is communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep for words."
Dance is the communication of our deepest self. Watch a person dance and, without a word, his or her soul is revealed. The body never lies. Dance may even have served as one of the earliest language of humans.
I like to use the comparison that Life is the Great Dance, God is the Music, and we humans are dancers. God has to be Music - God gave us hearts to beat in tune with His heart. The twinkling stars seem to dance in the heavens; leaves dance on the trees; even the currents of water seem to move in their own rhythm: the tides of the ocean rise and fall in harmony with the gravity of the moon.
Our lives are a dance with God. Each movement of our bodies, minds, and souls are a response to the rhythm He sets for us - the Plan He has in mind for us. Each minute the rhythm changes and we are free to move in harmony or cease dancing. Yet God expects our steps to be unique, spontaneous, our own individual, passionate response to life's surprises. And we have to be athletes, as great dancers are athletes, because the dance of life is intense, sometimes difficult, challenging. We have to be, as Albert Einstein said of dancers, "athletes for God."
"For I know the plans I have in mind for you," God sings in our hearts, "plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:1.) But who can always understand these plans when life leads us into dancing in the dark, and we endure pain and hardship? It's easy to tell when someone's heart and soul have stopped dancing - including our own. Our steps are heavy with bitterness and despair.
But every new rhythm God sets is a new dancing lesson.
Kurt Vonnegut thinks that "Unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
Rumi says the passionate dancer in love with a passionate God never stops dancing: "Dance when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free."
Some would say that God is also a dancer; Friedrich Nietzche said "I would believe only in a God Who knows how to dance."
Jesus is the Lord of the Dance, then, the One Who taught us how to hear and respond to His Father's Music, and how to dance together in the Great Dance of Life: "Dance, dance, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I'll lead you all in the dance, said he." (Sydney Carter.)
The tragedy is that Jesus called to the Pharisees, but they wouldn't dance, wouldn't follow him.
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." (Nietzche.)
That's the great risk for the dancer: the more faithfully you dance in dedicated rhythm to your own inner music, the more you run the risk of rejection, of being out of tune with the rest of the world.
But, dear God, isn't it worth it to be "out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful...?" For you dance clothed in the Beauty and Power of God.