March - April The Dance of Tradition

     Ballet is a VERY traditional art form and an old one as well, dating back to the Italian Renaissance in the 15th century! It is a very structured art form that has changed only slightly since its' creation. Ballet and lovers of the ballet have endured through many ages of testings of the times. Dancers still love to study the longest surviving dance form there is, ballet.

     Jazz dance is only about 75 years old. Hip hop which is only about 40 years old continues to evolve into different dialects of hip hop. There's popping and locking, tutting, old-school, nu-school, breakdancing, house, krumping, electric boogaloo, you get the idea...it's still identifying itself, even today.

     With ballet, that's not so, it's very rigid and traditional. The customs and workings of ballet are passed down from one generation to another.You don't break the ballet rules. There's only one way to achieve the look of a ballet dancer, the flexibility, the strength, the beauty....so says the Masters that teach the law of ballet. If the teachers of the ballet from 500 years ago could see hip hop of today, I think we might could hear the turning of their bodies over in their graves!

      Because of the major difference between the staunchness of the time-tested ballet and the free-er looser moves of hip hop I can almost see it much like the Jewish religion, which had hundreds of years of perfecting their form of worship, and then here comes Jesus along and completely messed their God-theology all up!

     The works, the doing, the tedious practicing, the working your way through the ranks...then, here comes grace...all looking and acting NOTHING like tradition, AT ALL! The attire, the pomp and circumstance, the atmosphere...different all different. Hip hop is nothing like ballet, other than it is a dance form, too.

      Jesus was NOTHING like the the tradition of the Jewish religion. Yes, He studied traditional Judaism, all good Jewish boys do, but as an adult He broke with tradition. In reading Luke 11, specifically verses 38-39 (but please read the whole chapter 11 to get the whole idea) Jesus very boldly broke the tradition of hand washing before a meal. It was a Jewish law. You were unclean if you ate with dirty hands and the dishes from which you ate had to be ceremoniously cleaned also. And here's Jesus with the message of grace pointing out what good is it to wash anything on the outside, for tradition sake, but have insides that were dirty or full of sin. He also points out that God (Himself) made the insides AND the outsides of people.

     I, in no way, am insinuating that ballet is wrong or sinful or hip hop is good!!! I am using this analogy to highlight the huge opposites that they represent. I am not saying that ballet is too traditional to be studied over hip hop. I'm comparing these two because I am speaking to dancers that "get it"! I hope to stir up your imagination and encourage you to understand that Jesus broke the rules to take us from the law of sin and death to the law of grace. Using ballet to represent the law and hip hop to represent grace is how I felt led to present it.

     We've all taken class from dance teachers that were "the law" where there was no forgiveness of mistakes. And we've also had "grace" teachers that loved us into the dancers we are today. Am I right, or am I right? For "grace" teachers desire for you to achieve a triple pirouette but they'll love you and appreciate you whether you do or you don't. They value the "inside" of your cup. The law-loving teachers will make you feel less-than and unworthy of their tutelage if you don't "perform", take Abby Lee of Dance Moms for example. Does that give you an image of what I mean?

     Always continue towards doing your dance training well, but you aren't asked by God to do your dance training perfect. Perfection does not open the gates of Heaven for you to enter. It's grace and only grace that makes entering into His perfection even possible.

     Go into your next class with the mindset of breaking tradition and dance only because God has created it and wants to share it with you to enjoy. Think of Jesus, if we were a dancer today...would He be a ballet dancer or a hip hop dancer?