Since movement is a normal part of life it has to be a part of worship forever. However, highlighting or emphasizing actions is the purpose of dance. These articles describe sources and means for utilizing movement more fully in worship.
Gestures denote the movements of a part of the body as distinct from the whole. Wagging the ears, shaking the fist, stamping the feet—these are gestures. One can gesture with the fingers (beckon), with the shoulders (shrug), or with the eyes (wink). Smiling too is, strictly speaking, a gesture, since only part of the body is mobile—the face. We clap with the hands, nudge with our elbows, frown with our foreheads, embrace with our arms, kiss with our lips, etc. Gestures are not always easy to interpret. We scarcely need a Hamlet to know that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. The meaning of a gesture may be modified by a posture: I may shake my fist at someone, but if my whole bearing is one of good humor, with a smile on my face, I obviously intend to communicate a playful threat and not some warning of doom to come.
Posture, according to the OED, denotes the position and carriage of the limbs and of the body as a whole when it is in a state of immobility. Under posture then are to be grouped a long list of words that designate total body shape. A person is said to be standing, sitting, squatting, crouching, kneeling—these are all postures. To assert that someone has a threatening posture is to indicate that his jaws, shoulders, legs, and feet are thrust forward aggressively and that his hands have been made into fists. A posture of exhaustion points to hanging heads, drooping shoulders, dangling arms, and unsteady legs. While posture thus relates to a condition of stillness, this stillness, as Martha Graham has emphasized, can be dynamic and not static: it may be the body at its most potential efficiency (S. J. Cohen, ed., Dance as a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present [Pennington, N.J.: Dance Books, 1977]). Posture can also involve, in the words of Carolyn Deitering, either complete tension or complete relaxation which “are the two poles of no movement between which all movement takes place” (C. Deitering, “Creative Movement Expression,” Momentum [Journal of National Catholic Education Association], [1974]: 18-23), while movement itself can take any one of three forms: gesture, which has already been mentioned, together with posture adjustment, and locomotion.
Posture adjustment denotes the action whereby one changes one’s body shape. I am standing (posture) and I then lie down on my back (posture adjustment) and so adopt a new posture of supineness. In this movement, every part of the body has been involved. Posture adjustment also signals a change of attitude. A woman standing erect, with head held high and a haughty expression on her face, who then bows down and prostrates herself on the ground is adjusting her posture from one of independence and possibly defiance to one of servitude and humility. She has disposed herself bodily in a particular posture. So a distinction has to be observed between a participle which may denote a posture (e.g., kneeling), and an active verb which describes posture adjustment (e.g., I kneel or am in the process of kneeling down). Posture then calls attention to a completed movement while posture adjustment specifies the actual motion.
Locomotion, as its etymology indicates, involves movement or motion from one place (loco) to another. It denotes therefore not movement on the spot but through space. In the horizontal plane, one runs or walks, while in the vertical it is possible to jump or hop.
Directions
The several adjustments of posture may each be placed on a scale that can be read either downwards or upwards. If we start in a standing posture, then bowing, sitting, kneeling, and lying on the ground are successive stages of descent to the earth, with falling as a precipitous way of achieving the same end. If we start from a supine posture, then the posture adjustments we can make are all concerned with ascending or rising movements. The meaning of the adjustments derives largely from the significance attached to the directions of up and down, but turning, since it involved changes of direction on a horizontal plane, has to be interpreted differently.
Directions have indeed always been important for human beings. Jews pray towards Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca; Christians orient their churches to the east. Although we are perfectly aware that God does not dwell on the top of our atmosphere, height symbolizes that which is more important (a higher position) and indeed the upward direction is interpreted as Godward while downwards is the direction of the creature, of the grave, and even of hell itself.
The expressiveness of directions has been admirably set out by Joan Russell: Reaching to the high point directly above gives the feeling of aspiration, a reaching beyond oneself into the endless space above. Movement in the opposite direction, deep, is helped by the pull of gravity and has a feeling of stability and security. Movement across the body brings about a closing-in movement, almost as though cutting oneself off from everyone else. The movement to the open side brings about an awareness of others with an almost welcoming attitude. Movement backward gives a retreating expression, while movement forwards has an advancing, reaching expression. (Joan Russell, Modern Dance in Education [London: MacDonald & Evans, 1958])
The Sources of Christian Movement Vocabulary
With these distinctions in mind, it should now be possible to set out a movement vocabulary, but there is one other factor to be considered, and that is the determination of what source or sources should be drawn upon. To attempt to adapt the Hindu vocabulary, as a number of Christians in India are very properly doing (R. Englund, “Christian Dances in India,” Journal of World Association for Christian Communication 27:2 [1979]; R. Englund, “Sing a New Song,” Now [Methodist Church Overseas Div.] [1983]: 8f), would not be a sensible proceeding in Western societies where the culture and movement conventions are so different. Another point of departure has to be sought. In the first place, past Christian practice presents itself, already hallowed by tradition and use. This practice has the virtue of familiarity. To this can be added, in the second place, Shaker movement patterns that are sufficiently distinct from mainline Christianity to come under a separate heading. In the third place, it is reasonable to suppose that an extension of them by reference to the Bible would be generally acceptable. Such an extension is unlikely to prove difficult because biblical anthropology knows nothing of the body-soul dualism and uses, therefore, psychological concepts to characterize bodily parts and movements. Hence over and above their strict physiological meaning, organs and limbs have a further significance attached to them. To give an illustration: the word in Hebrew translated as throat—that is its anatomical designation—can also mean breathing, life, and desire. Indeed the main Hebrew terms for worship are verbs of physical movement such as “to prostrate oneself” or “to raise the hand to heaven.” Worship then can never be exclusively mental or spiritual; it has to be physically embodied. Precisely because of this perspective, the Bible is likely to provide a rich source for movements, and indeed there are only a few limits to be observed.
First, it has to be accepted that some parts of the body have no meaning ascribed to them either in themselves or in use. The legs, for example, apart from being bent in prayer (and even then it is customary to speak rather of the bending of the knees), are afforded no special significance. Then some organs are, as it were, neutral in that they only acquire meaning from the way they are used, e.g. lips can flatter, lie, or praise. Moreover, since the interpretation of gestures is in part a question of conventions subject to cultural change, not every biblical interpretation will commend itself at the present day—to give an example: winking the eye is an expression of contempt according to the Old Testament, whereas in modern Western society it is a come-hither signal.
There is a fourth source that should not be neglected, and that is ancient Middle Eastern iconography (O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms [New York: Seabury, 1979]). This serves to supplement the biblical material as well as to illustrate it. Postures and gestures can be studied on coins, seals, and painted mummy cases; they are represented in statues and bas-reliefs, while archaeological finds of all sorts have their own contribution to make.
Finally of course there are the meanings attributed to conventional gestures which often coincide with their functions (e.g., to clench the fist is to show aggression precisely because that is what a boxer does in order to fight). Natural positions too have their inherent meanings, e.g., kneeling is a near-fetal posture expressing dependence and need. Moreover, to kneel is often a painful thing to do, especially in Eastern churches where there are no foam-padded kneelers and no bench in front against which to support oneself. Penitence then becomes a bodily condition (A. Chirovsky, “Revelation and Liturgy: The Epiphanic Function of the Human Body in Byzantine Worship,” Diakonia 13:2 [1978], 111-19).