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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Dancing the Word
:
Techniques of embodied authority among Christian praise dancers in New York City
Contributor:
ELISHA, OMRI
imprint:
Wiley, 2018
Published in:American Ethnologist
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1111/amet.12672
ISSN:
0094-0496;
1548-1425
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>Praise dance is a Christian movement genre, popular among churchgoing women of color in the United States, characterized by the use of interpretive dances as vehicles of liturgical worship, testimony, and evangelism. Combining spiritual and artistic disciplines, including techniques derived from ballet and modern dance, black female praise dancers embody the gospel and cultivate religious authority in ways that reinforce orthodox norms while elevating creative skills and aesthetic sensibilities normally found outside the purview of religious tradition. Such efforts, and the challenges and opportunities they entail, demonstrate how the movement of cultural forms between secular and religious domains influences ritual innovations and the terms in which they are authorized. They also show how gendered conceptions of embodiment and power may be reimagined.</jats:p>