Vibrations shake the edge of the Moore Theatre. There is a loud dance get together within the foyer, so my pal and I hurry down the ramp the place we be part of the solid of Leviticus or Love and to Walk Amongst Humans and different viewers members. A dance get together! This is the primary signal that this present by dani tirrell and The Congregation is like no different I’ve seen, or slightly, participated in. There is an environment of joyful group as we shimmy collectively. I learn in this system later that the viewers has the position of The Assembly, however it’s Sunday, and I don’t want this system to know that I’ve entered a type of dance church. I’ve by no means been a church goer, however this already feels just like the type of acceptance that breaks down my preconceived notions of how “church” can domesticate a religious freedom of expression.
As the viewers settles of their theater seats, twelve solid members thread their approach down the aisles and shed their road garments till they stand in black undergarments as if prepared for a type of baptism. It is an equalizing gesture, a shedding of outer identification. They stand earlier than us united as people, however distinctive of their particular person our bodies. I learn in a Seattle Times article that tirrell intends Leviticus to “portray the joy found in the Black church specifically, and more generally in Black culture in all its manifestations.” Two of the performers are white, so it’s clear tirrell’s imaginative and prescient additionally extends this pleasure past boundaries of race.
The dancers are known as “Neophytes”—folks new to a topic, ability, or perception— in this system, which is ironic within the sense that they’re all uber achieved performers. The dancers’ resumes embody such huge names as Alvin Ailey, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Julliard, BANDALOOP, the Late Late Show with James Cordan, in addition to many celebrated native dance makers.
The performers slowly cross the gleaming white Marley flooring, beneath the disco ball, previous the white wings and towards the again white curtain arms raised to the strains of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, singing Give Yourself to Jesus. They dancers pull on white and black tulle clothes permitting the viewers to see-through the outer layer of costuming in a lot the identical approach tirrell’s Congregation is about seeing previous stereotypes and labels to, as this system states, “promote creative collaboration and provide a space for everyone to share their experiences, joy, love, anger, Queerness, and feminism.”
What follows is a dance sermon of the best order narrated by tirrell because the Ecclesiastic standing subsequent to Keyes Wiley, the Missionary of Music and lighting designer. The hair on my arms stands up because the vitality of Nina Simone’s Take Me to the Water coalesces with the viewers hollering and cheering as performers transfer by a mixing of Afro-Cuban, hip hop, ballet, Voguing, and street-style dance that defies categorization. Snatches of lyrics and textual content wash over me.
“We are shape shifters depending on who are in proximity to…demonizing false selves. Every gift is born of a wound. Listen for the sound of your own name.”
The stage is glowing in pink gentle, swirling in multicolored dots with a crescent moon as performer Abdiel dances with abandon of their silver-heeled hustle sneakers. The meeting/viewers barely wants an invite to affix dancing within the aisles. The call-and-response dynamic is well-established. The unbelievable smorgasbord of dance types consists of faucet by performer Cipher Goings. Goings’ tapping turns into the beat shifting the dancers. The dancers jerk to his rhythm nearly feeling an out of doors pressure act upon them.
Dancers rotate by a collection of solos. Their falls to the bottom echo tirrell’s phrases. Angels hear how she weeps. Each wound is divine anguish. At the top of every solo, different dancers come and raise their fellow congregates up, maintain them in lengthy embraces. Inside darkish, uncooked open locations the place love leads. The jumps, significantly throughout Olivia Anderson’s solo, grow to be leaps of religion untethered from social negativity.
The Bible references non secular dancing as an expression of pleasure and worship, and enslaved Africans in America preserved a few of their cultural rhythms and dance by mixing them into Black Christian church providers, offering hope, perseverance, and connection to ancestory. That historical past is current because the performers kind a diagonal aisle and tirrell dances down it. When the Leviticus Congregation opens right into a semicircle the viewers barely wants an invite to affix. The lyrics, “Finding your own divinity without permission,” echo the sentiment. On stage the person subsequent to me from the viewers leans over and says in amazement one thing about how he got here to this efficiency on a last-minute whim and had no concept that an expertise like this existed.
The efficiency ends with the Neophytes main the Ushers (invited group dancers) by a parting within the again curtain lit in a heat glowing circle. I hear, “When angels speak of love, there is no separation.” Afterward, it turns into clear that these group dancers are a part of the bigger group household that helped shepherd Leviticus to life. As Aisha Noir introduces the solid rap-style, particular tribute can be paid to all these behind the scenes that make it doable together with tirrell’s husband, Marlon Brown, and manufacturing stage supervisor Dominque Thomas for whom Leviticus is his final present earlier than shifting out of city.
We filter out of the theater newly energized, bathed in love, and rejoicing on this life during which we’re all neophytes. The message I obtained from that sermon is that we should always converse our personal names with reverence in order to have the ability to raise others up with love. Poet Cole Arthur Riley, whose e-book Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human is likely one of the texts tirrell primarily based the present on, stated it this fashion, “If you aren’t in your body, someone else is. The systems of this world have everything to gain from your disembodiment. Stay near to yourself. Listen to your body.”
Leviticus or Love and to Walk Amongst Humans Book I ran April 20-21 at The Moore Theatre.