Shut up and dance

A week ago, I went to see Pina, a film by Wim Wenders that was nominated for best documentary at this year's Academy Awards. I'd read about it, but I was not prepared for its impact. I knew it was a tribute to Pina Bausch, a famous German choreographer who died in 2009. But I'd never seen her works. I'm no expert on dance, and I can't adequately assess or explicate what I saw. Instead, I'll comment on what I see as implications for our spirituality.

But first, let me say a bit about the film. Just look at the poster (above). That image itself is stunning. Now magnify that with about 90 minutes of dances that, as A.O. Scott writes, "enact dramas of desire, sexual violence and the passage of time." They're set on stages and in all kinds of other settings, from city sidewalks to tram cars to forests and fields. The combination of dance and film is often expertly done.
Now notice that quote beneath the title on the poster. It's in German but can be translated as "Dance, dance, or else we're lost." These are Pina Bausch's final words in the film and summarize her passion for her art, which is also her life. Such passion can feel threatening to many of us. Art has the power to frighten us because it deals with emotions, and good art gets to the heart of who we are in our world. It reveals both the beauty and the ugliness of our world and helps us feel that. Many of us don't want to go there.
This was evident in the theater, where only seven or eight of us were watching.
As I viewed this film, I kept wanting a narrative, an explanation of what I was seeing. To get that, you can go to Wikipedia or other sites, which describe some of the pieces shown in the film. But, besides some interviews with the dancers, and a few with Pina, the film is mostly dances. Some of these are disturbing, depicting various kinds of oppression, while others make you want to get up and dance, even though you know you can never match the skills of these magnificent dancers. Pina tells one dancer simply to express joy. He comes up with a movement that does just that. It is--how else to say it--joyful. 
Now, two things I want to apply to our spirituality. One is the nonverbal nature of dance. As I sat there, I thought of something that's been bugging me lately. So much of our spirituality, mine at least, is verbal. It tends toward thought and framing that thought into words. And as I've sat in worship services and, last weekend in Indiana as part of my job, in meetings of church leaders, I thought, We talk too much. We fill our worship and our meetings with words, when maybe we need to do more listening to the Spirit and, dare I say it, dance.
Here's the other thing, which is related. Dance is so physical. Pina's dancers are usually barefoot and wearing few clothes. They express their art with their bodies, contorting them into all kinds of positions, moving them in graceful and frenetic ways to display various emotions. That the film is in 3-D only accentuates the viewers encounter with bodies. 
As I argue in my book Present Tense, spirituality is often equated with the nonphysical. But true Christian spirituality, as opposed to what I call Gnostic spirituality, does not deny the body but incorporates it into spirituality, which means following or living in the Spirit, not out of the body.
I could go on about these implications for our spirituality, but I'll stop. Perhaps I can summarize these thoughts this way: Instead of living in our head and talking (or writing) about it, maybe we should shut up and dance.