Duke Ellington makes religious experience rock, and rock elegantly. The "Come Sunday" concert of liturgical music and dance Friday at the Metropolitan Baptist Church excerpted works from Ellington's three oratorio-like "Sacred Concerts" to create an entertaining religious-musical spectacle. The concert was intended as praise and worship, and that it was. By the end, in the packed 3,500-seat church, both participants and congregants were in a state of exultation.

The Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture had commissioned Duke Ellington's granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington, to choreograph four liturgical dance works for the evening. Part of the center's initiative to document Washington's tradition of liturgical dance, it was a natural for a city that owes a great deal of its unique dance identity to the dance ministries flourishing in its black churches.

Troupe tells Underground Railroad history in dance, music, song

By WILMA SALISBURY
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
February 9, 2004

Edna Duffy, director-choreographer of Duffy Liturgical Dance Ensemble, weaves the meaningful words and music into "Freedom's Song: The Spiritual and the Underground Railroad."

Moved by the spirit
Liturgical dancers step up in Boston churches

....
Liturgical dance ministry sits at the intersection of dance and God. Although dance is mentioned liberally in the Bible, it faced resistance from some Christians when introduced to churches in the 1960s and ‘70s. But now a cross-denominational array of churches embrace the idea of ministering to the congregation using elements of ballet, modern, jazz, African, or hip-hop dance.

BERKELEY
Celebrating dance as a spiritual act
Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Under the broad skylight of an assembly room at First Congregational Church in Berkeley on Saturday morning, nearly 100 dancers held hands in a winding, joyous procession across the wooden floor.

They repeated a song of eight words: "Many faiths, many forms, dancing the sacred together."

This morning ritual served to launch the day but also to wrap up the theme of a weeklong festival devoted to dance as a way to engage with God, the divine or other conceptions of the most sacred.