Arabesque: Lift Up Your Heart

Arabesque is a step of 1,000 placements. Arms out, shoulders down, leg lifted, reach from the chest, extend from the hip, pull the back up. The challenge of teaching arabesque is helping students start the movement from the center of the body, rather than focusing on the extremities. One day, when none of my instructions were working, I told students to do what I was feeling - lift up your heart. Suddenly, I watched the entire class beautifully shift. Even though the heart isn't the muscle we technically engage in arabesque, I was astounded that tapping into the heart made such a difference in the way these students danced.

But perhaps I should have expected it. In the Exodus story, after the Israelites have escaped Egypt, the prophet Miriam leads a dance of victory. After David defeats the Philistines and is anointed King of Israel, he is said to be “dancing before the Lord with all his might.” Psalm 150 is a call to praise God with musical instruments and dancing. Chapter 3 from the Book of Ecclesiastes says “For everything there is a season…a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Dancing, throughout Scripture, is movement from the heart as a connection to the divine.

Having lived my life in a highly liturgical church, prayer and worship have always had specific words, defined process, a “right” way to do it. Yet this past year of prayer in quarantine has been less and less about rigid technique and proper placement, and more about simply lifting my heart and letting myself love God - right from where I am, in the entirety of my being. Finding the strength not in skeletal structures or muscle alignment, but from my center. From the blood-pumping, life-giving heart.

In the same way that simply raising your arms and moving a leg isn’t quite an arabesque, the practice of our faith is so much more than words and gestures and postures. Like Miriam and David and so many of those who have danced before God, the ancient Christian invitation to prayer is to “lift up your heart.” 

What helps or allows you to lift your heart and connect with the Divine?