"Make It Dance" : When God Speaks Through Art

He walked out onto the dimly lit stage in levi jeans and a flannel shirt, without any shoes, just dark wool socks. He said nothing, but simply sat down at the baby grand piano in the center of the stage and stretched his arms out. The audience seemed to be holding a collective breath. There was a pregnant anticipation that lasted until the artist put his fingers on the keys, and the music exploded into our souls, carrying us to a place that only great art and great artists can take us. It wasn't until I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks, that I actually realized I was crying.

That was over 20 years ago, and yet I still vividly remember that experience. The artist was George Winston. The concert was in a performance hall in Northampton, MA. The music was instrumental, there were no words. It wasn't "religious" or "Christian" necessarily and yet it was divine. It cut through all the facades, the justifications, the walls that we typically learn to construct to manage our adult lives and it spoke directly to my heart, to my soul. Great art has the power to move us, to inspire us, to transform us.

I have a phrase that I use when I teach. After a class has been rehearsing and drilling on technique, synchronization, the mechanics that are necessary; I will often turn to the students and say: "Now make it dance" My students have come to learn what this means. I mean now put your heart and soul into it. I mean, now let the dance touch you and show me how it has touched you. I mean, now let God speak through you as you dance.

After all, isn't that the essence of great art? It has to move the artist before it can move the audience. It has to speak to the soul of the dancer, before it can speak to the people watching. How do we make "great art?" It is difficult to define, impossible to fake, and yet unmistakable to recognize.

I remember years ago, when we were rehearsing a piece that was a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. I had spent weeks of heartbreaking research on the atrocities that were inflicted on innocent men, women and children. I was choreographing a piece with my senior company dancers and I was getting frustrated because they weren't grasping the enormity of what they were dancing. They were chatting and giggling and just being teenagers. I knew they hadn't yet discovered how to make this piece "dance".

So, I told them a story that I had read in my research that haunts me to this day. It was about a young Jewish boy who was executed with his Father. I couldn't hold back the tears as I told the students that their dancing was giving a voice to this little boy who had been so cruelly silenced. We finished choreographing that day holding back the sobs and I don't know if they were ever able to dance it again without tears running down their faces.

It happened again this past Saturday. We were rehearsing a company piece and we were choreographing the story of the Prodigal Son. There were only 3 dancers that I was working with in a room full of over 20 students. The music was instrumental and soft. Yet as I knelt on the dance floor and began choreographing the opening movements of that story - I felt a strange silence fill the room, all chatter stopped, I felt almost a heaviness and I realized as I danced that tears were flowing. We were "making it dance" and God was speaking through the art.

This week, let me encourage you to "make it dance." Refuse to simply go through the motions or put on a performance. Make time to listen to what life, to what God is speaking to you. Allow the music to touch your soul and whatever you do, may it come from that place deep inside of you where "deep calls unto deep." You were created by a master Artist who is calling you to "make it dance" so His love can transform a hurting world.