The first liturgical dance piece that I choreographed many years ago was for a Palm Sunday Worship Service. It was a dance for three dancers done in two parts. The first part was performed in silence and I choreographed it as a meditation on Jesus’ inner thoughts just before he entered Jerusalem on that donkey. Since he was Christ, he was fully aware that this triumphal procession would initiate the last and most painful season of his life-ministry on earth. I imagined that the time before he entered Jerusalem would have been a very quiet time... a deeply interior time for Jesus. 

So, I tried to choreograph divine interiority. I was studying Merce Cunningham technique around that time and the curves, arcs and spinal twists of the Cunningham technique gave me a useful physical lexicon to place on the dancers. This sense of Jesus’ human psychological response is a subject that I would like to choreographically dwell on again in the future.

In the second part of this dance for Palm Sunday, the dancers switched roles. Rather than the interior study of the first section, the dancers moved into the full exteriority of being attendees at the parade. The dancers picked up fan palms and celebrated the entering Christ with leaps and space-eating running patterns. No longer in silence, the pipe organ and choir performed the upbeat spiritual “Every time I Feel the Spirit.” It would be interesting to go back and think more deeply about this part: were the people simply jumping on a bandwagon of which they knew nothing?  Were they hypocrites who offered fake praise? Or were those offering hosannas to the entering Jesus the ones whose lives had been transformed by him? But, if they were the ‘transformed ones,’ how could they let the horrible execution happen just a few days later? How do we reenact their “exteriority” in our own time?

One day, I hope to choreograph more of the way of the cross. Right now, I make mental choreographic notes about Jesus’ time in the tomb until the Resurrection. It is a wonderful challenge for me to consider how his life and time can be embodied with dance.

How would you artistically and creatively respond to Christ’s Passion? If you were to paint a picture or write a poem or create a symphony or even plant a garden—what might it be?