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!
I'm very excited to let folks now that more and more of my choreography is now available on this website. I was just able to download two performances of A Dancer's Christmas. 25th anniversary and the Final performance for 2008. Just go to repertory and you'll find these performances available for viewing.
We are almost at the half point of the Lenten Season and we have been preparing for Monday of Holy Week. The danced/prayer service takes place on Monday March 24th at 7:30 in the upper church. I'm still working on some of the aspects of the service but we'll be doing Tree of Life, God Beyond All Names, Deep Within, In the Quiet, You Will Know, On Holy Ground and a new piece "Peter's tears" danced by Steven Cornwall and Kristina Wright. As usual we will be participating in Palm Sunday liturgies, Good Friday Stations of the Cross and Easter Vigil. Hope you can join for some of these special services.
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