Tonight is opening night for the 6th Season of Christmas Reflections. This year I was able to sit back and watch the amazing work of Jamie, Carol, Daisy and Kristina as they worked with the adult and children's company. The result is truly remarkable!! Such a beautiful production and the spirit of the work really captures the Joy of the Christmas season. For those of you "seasoned" followers of A Dancer's Christmas, there is an addition of the Men's Carol of the Bells with a surprise ending! 

The other night I took some time to read through the hundreds of names on the scroll in the Kresge Room that was created for me at the end of A Dancer's Christmas. It flooded me with so many memories of so many wonderful people who danced in the show, worked back stage or were just supporters of ADC over it's 28 year run. I have truly been blessed!

I hope you can come and see this year's performance.  Jamie would like to see you there as well!

Love

Fr Bob

This is quite a change for me! I'm sitting down at a rehearsal for Christmas Reflections instead of moving around! With the extraordinary direction of Jamie Huggins, Carol Faherty and Daisy Giunta, I can simply watch and enjoy! As always the energy and dedication of the dancers is outstanding and they really capture the spirit of this wonderful celebration of the season. Please make sure that you share this website with your friends so that they can find out about Boston's best kept Holiday secret!

Dear Friends, 
I realized that I haven't posted since our amazing summer performance of For the Greater Glory of God. The performance itself was amazing but the video is going to be even more amazing! Thanks to Jeremy Zipple, a Jesuit is a professional videographer we will have an absolutely awesome record. Jeremy used multiple cameras including a "Drone" so the perspective you see is not just from the front but from above and below. It's really breathtaking. I've seen the first edit of one of the pieces and it is simply so beautiful. I'm hoping the full edit will be available by the end of the year.

On another note, tomorrow we have auditions for this year's "Christmas Reflections". The dates of the performance are the 19th/20th/21st of December. Check out the CR section on the website for more details.

All the best

Fr. Bob

Dear Friends of the BLDE,

Almost 25 years ago, I created a dance/theater piece based on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Our company performed For the Greater Glory of God in many venues over these years, especially at Jesuit colleges and Universities. I am happy to tell you that we are restating this piece this summer. We're doing it so that we might have an good quality video that we can share with those interested in experiencing this powerful interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises. We are scheduled to perform it on Thursday July 17th at St. Ignatius. I hope you can join us!

Dear Dancing Friends,

This Weekend we begin our Holy Week Services at St Ignatius. As always its a time of great beauty and power as we integrate dance into our retelling/reliving of the Triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, his Passion and his Resurrection. We begin on Sat/Sunday with the danced procession and the dramatic staging of the Passion. Monday evening we reprise last year's danced prayer service "Dancing on Holy Ground". On Good Friday, we use pray the Stations of the Cross using beautiful movement tableaus. At the Easter Vigil, we celebrate new life in Christ with dance throughout the service. I hope you can join us .

Dear Dancing Friends, 
We had wonderful performances of Christmas Reflections and dance at the Masses on Christmas Eve but now it's time to turn our thoughts to Lent and Easter. Fortunately, Lent doesn't begin until March so we have some time to prepare. If you are interested in dancing with us for Lenten evening prayer we will be rehearsing on Saturday mornings from 10-12:30 beginning on March 1st. Please contact Jamie at huggins434@gmail.com if you would like to join us.

I was blessed to be in Jamaica again for a parish immersion trip and offered a dance workshop for about 50 people. Steven Cornwall, our favorite Jamaican dancer assisted me.

Hope to see you at the Lenten Evening Prayer,  April 14th if you're not dancing with us.

Fr Bob

If you are planning to come to Christmas Reflections on Saturday December 21st (3PM), why not support the work of the company and come to a festive wine tasting at the Manse (Jesuit Community) following the performance. Price is $50 per person and includes a ticket to the performance. The wines will be wonderful and the food so much more than Wonder bread!
My apologies to those who have tried to contact me through the website. Just figured out how it works! If you don't hear from someone in a timely fashion, email me at frvereec@bc.edu. 
Please do what you can to promote the production with likes and tweets and whatever!
Hope to see you at a performance! Fr Bob

This year's production of Christmas Reflections will take place in the Robsham Theater at Boston College on the weekend of December 20-22. We have assembled a wonderful cast of professional dancers as well as BC students, alumni and others. Helen O'Dwyer's company will also be with us. One of the special blessings of the performance is having dancers from A Dancer's Christmas, like Daisy Merritt, Kerri Melley and Tatiana Obeso dancing with their children. If you were a fan of A Dancer's Christmas, make sure you come and see Christmas Reflections!

I can't believe I haven't posted since June! I may have been so amazed at seeing the bishops dancing at World Youth Day that I completely forgot to let everyone know about what I wrote for America Magazine. Here it is
More than 10 years ago (March 2002) America Magazine published an article I wrote entitled “Shall We Dance”. The question that I raised in the article was whether we as a people of God would respond to the invitation to “Praise God’s Name in the Festive Dance” (Psalm 49). When I saw millions of people including bishops and priests joining in a simple but lively dance at the closing liturgy of World Youth Day, I received an answer. 

As a Jesuit priest, trained dancer and choreographer who for more than 40 years has been exploring the power and beauty of dance as a very human form of prayer, praise and worship, I was moved to tears and laughter when I saw so many people responding to the call to praise God with “timbrel and dance” (Psalm 150) I was particularly moved to see many bishops enjoying themselves as they were taught the dance.

The criticism that we hear of using dance in a religious context is that dance in Western Civilization is only used for “courtship” or “entertainment”, refuses to acknowledge the wonderful tradition of “folk” dance in Western culture These are the dances that are usually very simple where people join together to express their joy and the beauty of human community. We saw a wonderful example of such a dance of the “folk” on Copacabana beach last week. It does seem that the Holy Spirit was “taking the lead”

On Pentecost Sunday we had 7 wonderful dancers who represented the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit. Kristina Wright, Sarah Martinez, Cecily Power, Luisa Donovan, Sarah Duehren, Ava and Sofia Moreno danced the opening procession, the sequence and the Gospel procession. It was wonderful!