On The Holy Blues, Sinners, and Contemplative Dance

or, thoughts about dancing and contemplation by a non-dancer

Photo by jurien huggins (@jurienh) on Unsplash

                “If you think about Black dance… it becomes a way that our particular story is
           instructive and illuminating to what it means to be a human being.” - Imani Perry

                                                            “when prayer doesn’t work: dance…” - Danez Smith

           “God gave me feet for dancing / And that's exactly what I'll do” - Ezra Collective

A few weeks ago, a friend and I had the privilege of attending an Alvin Ailey performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The evening featured the captivating world premiere of The Holy Blues, a new piece by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Taking its title from remarks in Alvin Ailey’s journal, The Holy Blues draws inspiration from the Ring Shout, a dance originating from Central and West Africa, and The Door of No Return in Senegal, the final point of departure for enslaved Africans sent to the Americas and the Caribbean. The work masterfully encompasses both gospel music and the blues, blending the sacred and the secular, and shows how music and dance are “passages to the divine.”¹ This new work seamlessly joins the stellar lineup of Alvin Ailey's repertoire, which has long been celebrated for its profound blend of Blackness, spirituality, and dance. As I watched, this new creation struck me as particularly reminiscent of themes explored in the acclaimed movie, Sinners, and not only because of its usage of the blues.

In Sinners, dance is a profoundly visible and integral aspect, conveying a powerful sense of liberation, community and commonality. Without revealing any spoilers (though if you haven't seen Sinners by now, that's on you) the film depicts many particularly freeing experiences that characters have through dance, showcasing the freedom individuals find in both large group settings and private moments. Whether it's the humans dancing in the juke joint or the vampires dancing in the field, both groups in Sinners engage in dance that appears deeply emancipating.

The director of The Holy Blues, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, noted in an interview that while her work predates the movie Sinners and has no intentional overlap, the themes were "cooking in the atmosphere" or, as we might otherwise say, it was what the Spirit was leading people to consider at this time, a time when we need this reminder. As we experienced The Holy Blues (because I think one doesn't watch dance, one experiences it) we were truly awestruck by the seamless melding of music and bodies, the evocative stage design, the striking costumes, and just the overall vibes in the audience. Right afterwards, as we were discussing it, we realized that the piece powerfully highlighted how dance can connect us with our spirituality.

But this brought up an interesting question for me: If we readily acknowledge dance as a form of joy, resilience, and liberation, how can we also embrace it as a contemplative practice and experience? As I was thinking about it afterward, I started to notice how deeply contemplative dance is.

Again, what exactly is contemplation? If we continue to define it as making conscious contact with the Divine, then as I often say, many things can be contemplative. It struck me just how much dance, in particular, serves as a contemplative posture. Consider the dancers in The Holy Blues or Alvin Ailey's most known work, Revelations. To prepare for the dance, performers must deeply internalize the entire process: the individual moves, the intentionality behind each gesture, and their bodies must be particularly attuned to the music and rhythm. As the audience, we are then invited to share in this experience by observing in silence, watching someone engage their entire being in a time specifically set apart for focusing on music and dance, and in these two works specifically, also God.

As we watched the Alvin Ailey performance, the entire opera house was hushed. We were all silent, yet intensely focused on the music, the seamless way the dancing intertwined with it, and how the dancers' bodies flowed in and out of one another. The work not only explored the blues as a genre but also offered a powerful commentary on the nature of collective healing. It isn't just me, either, or this work. I asked Destinee Bates, recent graduate of Union Theological Seminary and Program Associate at the Episcopal Divinity School, about how dance has connected her to God, and she shared her insights without even knowing I had Alvin Ailey on my mind:

“Witnessing Alvin Ailey’s Cry at New York City Center felt like seeing my own soul laid bare beneath a merciless spotlight. As the soloist carved her path from stooped anguish to soaring liberation, she unearthed a grief within me buried, unacknowledged for months. When her body trembled in those final arcs of release, mine echoed it. My throat tightened, my chest clenched, and in the sacred space she carved, my tears finally broke free: a long-lost unburdening. Later I learned Ailey choreographed Cry as both a tribute to Black women’s resilience and a testament to survival through sorrow. Yet in the charged silence after the final note, I felt something deeper than tribute: almost like a hushed communion. Every embodied sigh in the theater seemed to coalesce into a prayer. And in that suspended moment, as the dancer’s final pose held us, I felt it: the Divine. Pure ancestral spirit moving through us, consecrating every reclaimed tear.”

A few weeks later, with all of this in mind, I attended a retreat led by Rev. Adriene Thorne, Senior Minister of the interdenominational Riverside Church in NYC, aptly named "Celebrating Blackness." Rev. Thorne, during the retreat, encouraged us to celebrate our Blackness further by connecting with dance.

Phot by cottonbro studio on Pexels

I'll be honest, I've always struggled with dance, or, well, let's just say I'm not a particularly good dancer. People often expect (perhaps stereotypically) that all Colombians are natural dancers, a notion I've unfortunately disproven to the chagrin of many a dance partner. Some of that is due to growing up in the Pentecostal church, where dance was commonly discouraged. There was a peculiar double tension regarding the body and dance in my particular flavor of Pentecostalism. On one hand, we embraced ecstatic dance and worship, often stemming from the experience of being "baptized" by the Holy Spirit. But on the other hand, there was an "anti-body" stance, a desire to police bodily expression, ensuring people only engaged in dances "led by the Spirit." This give-and-take within Pentecostalism sometimes confused me. The body is meant to be a tool of the Divine, yet it's truly embraced only when serving that purpose in an unconscious way. It's less about conscious contact with our own bodies and more about bodies being "taken over." More simply, dancing, when overcome by the spirit during worship, was considered good; however, wanting to dance salsa, whether inside or outside the church, was deemed bad.

without launching into a full diatribe on Pentecostalism, dance and the body (though that would be an interesting article, and I'm sure others have written about that) Rev. Thorne encouraged us to simply engage in dance. So, I did. I swayed with others in attendance, who immediately discovered that I was not a good dancer. This was evident last month when I tried to dance at our annual community retreat, when I boldly, but somewhat tragically led us to create a Soul Train line, and again when I attempted to show people how to dance to certain lyrics from a Lil Jon song at a friend's wedding. As embarrassing as those moments might sound, both for you to read and for me to recall, there was a profound feeling of connecting to the Divine in a unique way during them. I asked Rev. Thorne about this later and she shared the following:

“Dance, like many movement practices, can take us outside of time. Have you ever put on music to dance and wondered where all the time went?! That is you existing outside of time. The Divine is very present to us in moments outside of time, where everything falls away. In this holy space we forget the bills, the troubles of the world, and even ourselves. We become what we were created to be, pure love. In this space we are open to an encounter with the Divine. We are open to holy wisdom. We are open to the truth of our own existence — we were created for this very connection.”

This entire experience brought me back to Sinners and the powerful role dance plays in its narrative of liberation. It also reconnected me to The Holy Blues, and even drew parallels to The Matrix, where dance is also depicted as liberatory. But it was this idea of dance as a conscious connection to the Divine that truly began to intrigue me. I started to wonder: could experiencing dance as an observer be considered a form of contemplation? And furthermore, could engaging in dance ourselves also be a form of contemplation?

I asked Mother Lisha Epperson from St. Peter's Episcopal Church Chelsea about this, to which she responded:

“Dance creates a contemplative/meditative space by requiring deep inward attention that unifies body, mind, and spirit in the present moment; however that embodiment manifests for each person. Through this practice, we transform our entire being into prayer, offering ourselves wholly to the Divine and trusting that our expression flows from the soul's deepest source. Because the Divine chose to dwell in flesh, we encounter the sacred through our own embodied experience, coming to know God as participants and/or witnesses to this mystery.”

In short, what I think I am learning from all these experiences, whether it's experiencing dance in an Alvin Ailey work like Revelations or The Holy Blues, observing the role of dance for both vampires and the Black community in Sinners, recalling how dance signifies liberation in The Matrix films, or engaging in dancing myself is that it can be a powerful way to make a conscious connection with the Divine.

Dance inherently possesses a certain silence; we're not speaking with words, but with our bodies. It's through our bodies that we connect to the Divine, and through that Divine connection, we can connect to others. This, in itself, is a core goal of contemplation: a way for us to connect with ourselves, with others, and ultimately with the Divine.

So, this prompts the question: how willing are we to consider contemplative dance? While a "silent disco" in the Meatpacking District might offer a form of individual entertainment, I believe the true power lies in its communal aspect. Listening to songs together; inhabiting our bodies in unison, or, in my case, discord; connecting with others through shared movement; all of these are ways the Divine can connect us, and how dance can lead us to the Divine.

Aizaiah and Nereyda Yong say it thusly in Sacred Parenthood that “The practice of dancing, in a literal sense, allows our hearts to soften and open to receive a beautiful outpouring of love and joy.” And I think what I'm also positing is that dance is contemplative. Aizaiah and Nereyda assert that “Dance is one of the most original and longstanding spiritual practices from across contemplative traditions.” It's a practice where silence is imbued into movement, and, whether we're experiencing it or engaging in it, it offers a pathway to connect with others and with ourselves. At the end of the day, isn't that the ultimate goal of our contemplative practices?

These are just questions; I'm not suggesting every contemplative practice or every silent retreat needs to include dance, though I know that impetus exists for some. Dance, I believe, needs to be organic and natural, not forced and must come from within; and contemplatives, for the most part, might not be the people that dance a lot or make the best dance partners. But what if during a retreat there were organic moments of dance, moments to get in touch with our bodies, and what if that offered another pathway for people to engage in a deeper inner life, leading to transformation and liberation? Just a thought.

1. https://ailey.org/blog/holy-blues-behind-scenes