Heather Clark - Dance As the Spirit Moves: A Practical to Worship and Dance

Since I first met King Jesus at age 16, dancing has always been one of the highest and holiest ways to encounter the very heart of Heaven. My friend, Heather Clark, has taken what too often is reserved for the gifted or chosen and made dance available to all who are created to worship before His throne. In Heaven, we will dance for eternity. Why wait? I recommend this book for those who worship in spirit and truth and express with movement His very heart on earth. Dance on Heather, and may you take a generation of holy worshipers with you!

Heidi Baker, PhD
Founding Director of Iris Ministries

Dancing is the thing I love to do the most. I love the abandonment of movement, using the body to create shapes, pictures, and emotions. For me, all other art forms-and Im involved with many-are more indirect; they involve intellectual engagement that takes over my abandonment. However, dance allows me to express myself directly, without a filter. I am sure my level of expression has to do with the level of freedom that I feel in dance as opposed to other art forms. Its pretty unlikely that Im suddenly going to let loose an amazing guitar solo, or paint with passion and fury and end up liking it when its finished. No doubt, freedom of expression has to do with the varying degrees of my gifts; for when I dance, I own my movements. I feel very free. Though I think I will always be able to grow in technique, for the most part I dont feel hindered by a lack of moves or lack of ability.

For five years, I taught and choreographed with no formal training in dance-though not by choice. As a child, I tried to take dance classes, but found myself wanting to create instead of follow. When the class did choreography, I always thought it should go this way or that way, and seldom seemed to agree with the choreographer. Instead of classes, I would spend hours each night practicing, doing exercises that I made up, choreographing, and finding out how I liked to move to music. Everything about dance was internal for me, not external. Everything has to start on the inside and then move outward, manifesting itself into a move. (Experience has taught me that this is not the case with most dancers.) I would find myself, even at school dances, off in a corner by myself doing interpretive dance to the songs.

I was a very creative kid. Growing up, I found myself at different points involved in almost every area of the arts. I used to love to come up with ideas that my sister and I could play: Little House on the Prairie, School, Orphans. I always knew how the story could go, and my leadership gift would kick in. My poor sister, she wasnt even allowed to come up with her own lines when we would play. I always told her what to say. I know now that it had something to do with the directing gift that the Lord has put in me. Even as a child, I was exercising my creative foresight, and I knew how the story needed to go.

My main art form, however, was theatre. Before I was saved and the Lord changed my plans, I was going to go into theatre after graduating. I was involved in a few companies growing up and the stage was my passion.

After I was saved, a door unlocked inside of me.

After I was saved a door unlocked inside of me. It was the doorway into the chamber of dance. I hadnt grown up in church, so I didnt know if it was right or wrong to dance, I just danced. When I got water baptized, I came up out of the water dancing all over. I danced in worship all the time, and I dont think I realized that everyone else wasnt dancing with me.

After being saved, just before my 18th birthday, I got involved in a local church that put on a huge production each Easter about the life and death of Christ. The director of this 200-member production asked me to choreograph the dance. So I began with 12 dancers. Those first months were very difficult. I was brand new at teaching, and the dancers were brand new at learning dance. That combination made for a frustrating few months. Partway through the production, I found myself complaining to the Lord. However, I felt Him ask me to continue with the dance group. Far from stopping, the whole thing grew. In fact, after the production, we went full force ahead, choreographing somewhere around 15 dances. We called malls, hospitals, and parks-anyone who would allow us to perform. We contacted the city to get a permit and went as a group to perform our dances right out in the streets of Kamloops! That was where the dance group was birthed.

For the first two years of dancing, I had never seen Christian dance anywhere else. I didnt know it even existed in other churches. I was being called upon to start dance groups in other churches, and in those early years we started some 20 groups in Canada, Finland, Estonia, and Guatemala. There was no example for us to follow. We were pioneering something down a road without a map.

So how did we learn? We would literally get together, pray, and ask God to teach us how to dance. We would spend a lot of time doing spontaneous dance and worship dance, and use the movements that came out of our spontaneity. Interestingly, in one session, one of the dancers felt that we should put pieces of material on sticks and dance with them. Remember, we had not at this point seen Christian dance anywhere else! So, off we went to the thrift store to buy bed sheets. We put the whole bed sheet on a stick and danced with it. We worked up all of our courage to go and dance at the front of the church with these enormous bed sheets. All three of us were going to go out together, just so that we could