Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious Studies

Preface: Moving Between

ix Preface Moving Between All good things approach their goal crookedly. Like cats, they arch their backs, they purr inwardly over their approaching happiness: all good things laugh. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra1 People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. — Martha Graham, Blood Memory2 At first I tried to choose. I wanted to choose. I thought I had to choose between being a dancer and being a scholar of religion—that is, between the study and practice of modern dance and the study and practice of Christian theology and philosophy of religion. It seemed obvious. As conceived and lived in the modern West, the worlds of dance and religious studies move in opposite directions: artistic versus intellectual; embodied versus mental; feminine versus masculine; outwardly performative versus inwardly transforming . They represent discrete cultures and community networks, different in their styles of dress, codes of behavior, hierarchies of values, and architectural demands. Participation in either discipline requires total commitment. Educated to believe in the range of conceptual distinctions that justified the separation of these worlds, I was not surprised that I constantly felt torn in my attempt to move between them. In dance class, I could not help thinking about books I should be reading; in the lecture hall, I chafed against the imposed stillness, yearning to move vividly and put ideas into action. To me, this sense of tearing was proof that I had to choose. For years, I yearned for simplicity—to want to do only one thing. I tried to excise the pull of one or the other practice from my life, and just dance or just study religion. At every turn, the effort backfired, impelling me reluctantly and eagerly back to the field whose claims on my time and energy I sought to repress. Slowly the realization dawned: I could not choose. Each activity attunes me to a dimension of life without which a day is not complete . When I practice dance, whether European or American, Haitian or Hindu, sensory capacities breathe into awareness, opening onto new shapes of strength and kinetic potential. Releasing into the movement invites a rush of energy, a sense of body flowing, touching , becoming life. When reading theologians and philosophers of religion I am dazzled with ways of imagining the world that alter my sense of what is possible and desirable, meaningful and true. Many texts have guided me towards unforeseen horizons of understanding. Each activity then honors a capacity for experience and expression; each stirs and engages dimensions of consciousness that cooperate in the project of making and valuing life. How could I choose? The pull I have felt between dancing and writing comprises a generative paradox at the heart of my life, an irreducible tension held together by the passion of necessity. Following Nietzsche’s advice, I have learned to laugh at my crooked path. ■ ■ ■ This book represents an early fruit of my efforts to live this generative paradox. It recounts my effort to discern why scholars in the field of religious studies tend to devalue “dance,” or rhythmic bodily x Preface movement, in relation to text-friendly forms of religious life. Even in cases where scholars notice and describe dancing, I find something missing: an account of the contribution that the action of dancing makes to the religious meaning of the event at hand. In most cases, dances are described as texts, as functioning like texts, as enacting or imitating texts, or as explained with reference to texts, textual metaphors, or text-based methods of interpretation. Of course, in the tomes of modern Christian theology and philosophy, dance hardly appears at all. Or does it? The aim of this book is to unsettle the perception that dance is marginal to the practice and thus the study of religions. Along the way I advance a startling thesis: a mutually generative relationship between what appears as “religion” and what appears as “dance” lies at the heart of modern Western theories and methods of religious studies. Not only are our conceptions of the relationship between religion and dance negotiable, but this negotiation is necessary in order to enhance our understanding of religion in its conceptual , bodily, and historical forms. Religious studies scholars, I argue, stand to benefit from attending to dancing as a medium of religious experience and...