No one ever imagined that when we closed Ewell Monastery, to go, as we said, to lead The New Life and to witness to the gospel in wider society, that Aelred would soon be promoting professional contemporary dance! When I got back to Cambridge I began to write about God, Jesus and worship which took shape in the recently published book Worship as Believing. Just after that I came across dance and I soon realised that what I had been trying to write about could also be very powerfully presented in dance - and perhaps also more accessible for people. I had staked out my thesis in a sermon I preached in Queens' College chapel in Cambridge, two years earlier, in which I said,

The problem of faith has always been the acknowledgement of Jesus as the Lord who is with us now. Much pietism and liturgical rites of the past centuries have tended to see Jesus simply in the past and thus emptied out the reality of Christian faith. The way forward for the church today is to recover this relationship in Christ who is with us in lordship and friendship.

I also saw that there were parallels between monastic life and the daily life of a professional dancer! The monk lives a disciplined life which never varies - early rising to pray and worship and work and study. The dancer, each day, keeps to a discipline of body and mind set upon recovering the suppleness essential to her dancing capabilities. There is a dedication in both professions which is total.

So, I thought, is it not possible to show in dance the heart of Christian worship - Jesus, the risen Lord, always present in worship, as in daily life, to us all? So I read up a great deal about professional classical dance and its history since the 17th century. I was utterly fascinated to come to the understanding that dance in its professional form was a spiritual activity in the sense that the whole person is engaged in body, mind and spirit. The movement and attitude of the dancer reflects something more than just physical, acrobatical possibilities of the human frame. As a dancer in one of the great dance companies in America wrote, The dance is a metaphor ... it is the prayer of love.

So I mapped out how the Christian Eucharist might be danced with Jesus, the risen Lord, always present from his invitation to Eucharist and then to share with him in the celebration of the meal. It was to be a dance of relationships with Jesus present. That was over a year ago and since then this vision I had has been immensely enriched by the detailed suggestions of the choreographer and of the director of Springs Dance Company - a small Christian group of professional contemporary dancers based in London. This week, after a long period of gestation and rehearsal, the dance is to be premiered at Portsmouth Cathedral in the UK and then on tour out to nine other cathedrals. This has been a tremendous challenge to everyone engaged in the project. But it will surely bear fruit in many ways.

The programme outlines the progress of the dance -

As Jesus puts out the invitation to come and share, there are various responses which unravel a journey from distance to closeness. The building of community and, quite literally, the building of a table portray the heart of the Christian tradition. In this meal shared and prepared for us, the presence of Jesus at the table reflects his presence throughout our lives.

A footnote - Note that the dance has a round table, an image of the round altar we had at Ewell!

Copyright © Aelred Arnesen