Enjoy what you love, live like you're redeemed, and dance for an audience of One!The body was created for expressive movement & the heart for praise. When the two combine in the presence of the Lord, it's a powerful worship experience. Praise dancing allows people to glorify God through movement. For generations, dancing was considered an acceptable form of worship to The Lord. Miriam danced, King David danced, the Prodigal Son danced after returning home. Dance in worship is recorded in early scriptures. Historically speaking, after some research, I found that many Jewish priests were dancers and acrobats who performed during certain religious feasts. Liturgical, celebratory or sacred dancing can be seen in various churches across the nation and in many cultures around the world. In fact, each culture has it's own dance.
Liturgical dance is different from theatrical dance. Liturgical dancers simply express themselves and may not have formal training. Liturgical dancing is simply dedicated to praising God- while theatrical dance is dedicated to entertaining an audience. Therefore, the costuming for these two forms of dance is usually quite different.
Liturgical dance wear is modest and elegant to express beauty, passion, and dedication to God. The outfits are simple and flowing, rather than form fitting. Liturgical dance is not about showing off your body, but expressing your spirit before God. The colors of costume for liturgical dance are symbolic. Gold symbolizes divinity, silver symbolizes redemption, white symbolizes purity or holiness. Red is often worn to symbolize the blood of the savior and blue is worn to symbolize loyalty & truth. Green represents forgiveness/harmony between the soul and God, while purple honors God as Royal Sovereign. Dancers often use combinations of meaningful colors for liturgical dance wear. For example, wearing a white dress with a red sash means the dancer is expressing gratitude to Christ the Pure One. I'm currently learning how to express myself in this way and I've had very meaningful moments honoring my Creator. When it comes to this form of worship, Almighty God is Lord of the Dance.
4 comments:
Hi,
Hope u doing fine there friend.
Well poetry, dancing, music, painting, anything or any creative art its just a way to express ur feelings and thoughts and i think its all God gifted.
Takecare,
Samrina
Western culture have laways broken the shackles of spirituality that is always associated with arts. Be it music,painting or dancing. Coming from a country, where art form rarley transcend the bariers of spirituality, i find it very irksome.
There is a reason God created us with bodies that CAN dance and express ourselves. Why wouldn't we use that to worship Him? Great post!
In some manner or another, I've been doing this for years. Then I catch myself and say, oops.
I love the way you explained liturgical dancing. I may copy that and use it to try to explain to my husband some of the crazy stuff I do sometimes. There is just so much joy and love for all God has done for me, that I can't help but express it in dance sometimes.
In my life, Jesus is definitely the Lord of the Dance!
Post a Comment