Praise Dance School Glorifies God with More than their Mouths
NEW YORK – A New York-based dance school is teaching believers a novel way to worship the Lord - with their dance.
Raise Him Up Praise Dance School, located in midtown Manhattan, teaches students how to dance the Word of God using a multitude of dance styles including ballet, jazz, modern and African dance, each of these techniques having a focus on worship, praise, celebration and warfare. To allow participants to connect even more to the Word, sign language and mime can also be a part of the experience.
"The Word of God says we're to glorify Him with our bodies and that's what we do," states Wendy Heagy, founder of the dance worship school, in a statement.
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Dance worship has been continually becoming more and more popular over the past few years in the United States. As churches look for innovative ways to reach out to new people, many have delved into this "new" form of worship.
In areas that have large Pentecostal movements, this has been exceedingly evident as these congregations tend to be more open to non-traditional modes of connecting with the Holy Spirit.
In biblical days, this type of glorification was more common, but during the Reformation, it was replaced with more simple worship. The current times have seen a rebirth in interest in worshipping God with the body, however.
Praise dance can mean more than one thing, and can range from a choreographed piece to a simple, improvised dance during church service.
While also helping one grow spiritually, it has positive results towards physical health as well.
Raise Him Up Praise Dance School allows people of all ages to join, anywhere from 5 - 80 years old, but comprises mostly of people in their mid-20s through mid-60s, according to the NY Times. It also encourages all backgrounds of people to join.
Besides personal worship, the dance school also attempts to use its skills as an outreach to the community. It equips and disciples its students with helpful instruction for street outreach and evangelism through visual arts, "continuing the work of the Lord through the Great Commission."
"In many cases we've seen breakthrough with dance ministry where sometimes the spoken word or music alone hasn't gotten through," explains Heagy, in a statement.
The group visits a variety of places including a number of trips to state prisons.
Recently, the group was featured in a New York Times article on Mar. 4 called "Moved by the Spirit to Dance With the Lord," where it also published an accompanying video piece called "Praise Dancing Hits Manhattan."
On the web: the school's website at PraiseDance.org.
