Embodied Faith: Dancers Hope Blackburn & Jacob Shoup
in Conversation with Darby Brown
We spend so much time separating the bodily from the spiritual. In the incarnation of Jesus, he came down and took on a body like ours and moved like we do. These visceral emotions that oftentimes we don't even know that we have—you can really access them through dance and through particular movements and expressions.
— Jacob Shoup
Hope Blackburn and Jacob Shoup are dancers and choreographers with Ekklesia Contemporary Ballet, a professional dance company of artist-theologians whose goal is to create spaces where art and faith can flourish. Ekklesia’s diverse repertory utilizes a full spectrum of emotional and physical vocabulary while addressing issues such as poverty, inequality, and human suffering.
Hope Blackburn is a dancer and choreographer currently performing with Ekklesia Contemporary Ballet in Middletown, Connecticut. Through her art she has come to have a deeper understanding of who she is as a follower of Christ. She and her fiancé Jacob share this understanding and love for the art form of dance.
Jacob Shoup is a dancer-theologian at Ekklesia Contemporary Ballet. When at work, he always pursues embodying new aspects of his faith and religion.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. A version of the conversation is available in the audio interview above.
Darby Brown: I'd love to first hear about what drew each of you to dance.
Hope Blackburn: I started at a small dance company in Philadelphia, primarily ballet. There was something about dance that made me want to keep going, mostly the ability to express myself through movement. As a child, I was never good at expressing myself through words, and so dance, with all of its emotion, spoke to me. I would also say the drive and the work ethic and the way that it played to my desire to continue to improve and achieve something—that's what drew me to dance. That’s what made it more than just an after-school activity.
Jacob Shoup: I started when I was really young as well, around 5. Dance is this thing that has been with me my entire life, like God has been with me my entire life. There was a point when I had to decide between going down a professional route or keeping dance as this fun pasttime. I decided that if I made the decision to take my dance to the next level, I would have to do it for God. He had to be a part of my dancing. Ever since then, I've just been figuring out how he fits in and finding more and more places where he fits in.
DB: What role has faith played in your dancing journey, and where have faith and creativity intersected in your own lives? How does your faith influence your creative practice?
HB: That's such a big question. Even from the start, even though I might not have realized it, there were the Psalms. The way David expresses himself—I was trying to do the same thing with my dancing. At Butler, where we both went to college, we were encouraged to explore our own stories through dance. It was a place where I was able to connect with my own story and find who I was through dancing. While in college, I didn't see the great potential of purposefully melding my faith with my dance. I started to see the expression and the ways that my dancing could be like a prayer or a poem or that sort of worship or that form of communication. But dancing with Ekklesia has opened my eyes to the vastness of how art is literally what God created us to do and to be. There’s the garden and how God created everything, then he created man in his own image. Humans, because we're made in the image of God, not only have his being but also his ability to create.
You can have a lot of conversations about something, but only when you get it in your body do you realize that there's another layer to it.
Morley Van Yperen, one of our theologians at Ekklesia, talks about how dance can illustrate ideas in a very visceral way that most people and most forms of media or conversation can’t illustrate. When we're speaking about our faith or or trying to open people's minds to an issue, our dancing allows us to embody those complex ideas with our whole beings and through the interactions of the different company members. This can open up pockets of people's emotions and help them connect with their souls. That's why I think dance is a way of telling the story of our faith and a way of opening up people's minds to Christianity or even other complex topics. We do a lot of dances about social issues like homelessness or immigration as well. Opening up people's hearts to those issues through dance is really cool. You can have a lot of conversations about something, but only when you get it in your body do you realize that there's another layer to it.
DB: That’s so beautiful.
HB: I'm trying to make it understandable, but a lot of it's just the visceral feeling of crying out to God. I can only do that through movement and speaking in tongues. I don't speak in tongues, but I feel like my dancing can.
JS: The visceral aspect of it is so important because we spend so much time separating the bodily from the spiritual. In the incarnation of Jesus, he came down and took on a body like ours and moved like we do. These visceral emotions that oftentimes we don't even know that we have—you can really access them through dance and through particular movements and expressions.
When I first decided that dance was going to be my profession and I was going to incorporate Christianity into it, I was like, “Oh, I can just be a Christian and a dancer and just talk about God to my other company members.” But then I realized there are Christian dance companies that I can join, and I can dance about Christian topics. Then I realized that not only can I dance about Christian topics, I can learn more deeply through dance about these topics. We understand things better when we intake and then express them. At Ekklesia, we do this thing called Moving Dialogues, where we examine a Psalm and then explore what that Psalm means with our bodies. We talk about it after the process, and there's always so many more thoughts and more realizations that we didn’t have before.
HB: One thing that we always ask is, ”What does the body say?” A lot of times you might think you know what you're feeling, but the reaction of your body to something can say more than other reactions do.
DB: It's really beautiful to think of it that way, that it's not just your dance expressing your faith, it's your dance informing your faith and deepening it. So you mentioned the Psalm response dances—what other work have you done with Ekklesia? Have there been other highlight projects that have meant a lot to you?
HB: Recently, we collaborated with a group of musicians whose goal is to lift up silenced voices, and with Narratio, an organization that gives displaced people an opportunity to write poetry. The people from Narratio wrote poetry, and they were speaking their poetry, and then we were dancing. So we had the music, the poetry, and the dance, and we were listening to the stories of the poets, who were all people who had either been refugees or people who needed to move from their country because there had been violence. We were hearing their poems while we were dancing, while the music was being played, and all of a sudden, our movement took on an entirely new feeling, an entirely new meaning.
Elisa Schroth, our director, explained how that sort of performance, where we're not taking on people's stories, but trying to highlight other people's stories, is her way of lifting up the vulnerable and, through our faith, giving those who haven't been heard the chance to be the center of our work. That was really powerful. Often when I'm dancing about something, I have to grab at straws and pull it into my dancing to get the meaning out, to get the emotion out. But during that performance, I felt like everything was at my feet. I could express the emotions that I felt with ease. One of the poets wrote about his mom who had died, and my mom was in the audience, and I was almost in tears. It was so powerful.
JS: The work that has been the most impactful to me has been Ahava, our Christmas production, which is the story of Jesus, but it starts in Genesis with the creation and the fall. Then it goes into the birth, and it ends with his life, death, and resurrection. I have the incredible privilege of playing Jesus, which was a really intimidating idea at first.
But I’ve learned so much by going through different scriptures and trying to understand how Jesus would react to certain moments. Also by asking, where does each movement come from, and how I can try to understand the full humanness of Jesus? I could only rely on the grace of God, that he would provide some of his divineness into that performance. It was a very intense learning process, and it's different every single time that I do it. He asks me to learn something new, and he shows me a different part of himself every time I do it.
DB: What influences do you have in your dancing style? I know both of you do a bit of choreography as well. Are there any places you look to for inspiration, or other dancers or artists that you admire?
HB: My movement style is very influenced by modern dance. That's what my body wants to do—not necessarily that it comes naturally, but that's where my body wants to go. I like modern dance because it's really connected to the earth. Compared to ballet, which is about trying to be as regal and high and poised as possible, modern dance can root me into the earth, and I can be both more human and more connected to God. I draw a lot of inspiration from anything in creation, in nature: the earth and the ocean, the sky. A lot of the pieces that I've choreographed have been about something to do with God's creation. In terms of individual artists who have inspired me, anyone that I've been able to work with that has helped me develop my modern dance technique has been a big influence because it's a technique you can't really make yourself.
JS: I'm really drawn to stories or through finding a hidden story in a dance piece. I look at situations in my life to draw inspiration. But what is really good and healthy for me are those people who are taking the codified structure of modern dance and applying it to the Lord, such as Pater and Morley. Elisa, our director, does the same but with ballet, which is also inspiring.
DB: Hope I know you do some poetry, and Jacob, I think you write as well. How has writing maybe influenced dance or spirituality for you—or any other sorts of creative practices that you do outside of dance?
HB: At Ekklesia, we had a poetry-sharing night for the company dancers—there's six of us right now— because we realized that we all do poetry. There was a poem for every sound or for every music and movement. For me, my writing and poetry has been mostly journaling. I've been able to explore a lot of my biggest questions about God in that sort of writing. Sometimes I am able to flesh out an idea in writing or in poetry that I then can transfer to choreography. One time, I was writing about Moses parting the Red Sea, and then I had a choreographic idea about that. I'm always looking for choreographic ideas, but rarely am I able to just come up with them; they’re something I have to stew over.
JS: My writing is like an overflow. I've written two stories, and they were just for me, but one was about Hope, and it was in response to our developing relationship. Just thoughts and feelings about that somehow translated into a story, and I followed the thread that it led to.For the other story, I was meditating on a passage in Jeremiah about wells, and there were lots of well imagery in my life at the time. I wrote a story about a well, and it was also about the sins that I was dealing with and how to respond to those, what needed to happen for me to repent from those.
DB: I really liked how you described your writing as an overflow, it’s such a beautiful way of putting it. Somore generally speaking, how do you each feel spirituality and creativity influence each other? What do they have in common? Are there any tensions to explore at the intersection?
HB: There's always the question of how far is too far in terms of when I'm in deep expression mode. There have been times when I've gotten injured from improv, when you’re just dancing without a structure. I don't think art can be taken too far unless the art form, the dance, has become an idol. Whereas with my creativity, I definitely have idolized that and placed it as more important than my relationship with God. But I don't think the expression and the actual creativity itself ever go too far. I always ask, “Is there ever a way that I'm moving my body that's sinful? Is there ever something that I'm doing with my dance that's sinful?”
When my creativity—or just my desire to express something—is executed with anger or extremely passionate feeling, it’s good for it to go in that direction for a while, but at some point, I’ve got to rein it in. When I'm creative, I feel like I am more myself. Creativity is the best feeling—I just love it when I feel creative. Sometimes it can become an idol if I’m replacing my prayers with being creative or with writing or dance. When I'm being spiritual or when I'm praying, maybe I'm praying through seasons of lack of creativity or maybe I'm in a space where I'm just trusting God because I'm in a creative rut. I get in those all the time. Not being creative doesn't make me any less close to God. In fact, my level of spirituality might even increase when my creativity is low because I'm relying more on God. So they can definitely exist hand in hand, but they also compete.
DB: That's really important. I can relate to a lot of that with my writing. Having to ask myself at what point does my creativity become an idol. And I’ve definitely had moments when I’m not feeling creative and feeling down on myself because of that. It’s so important to remind yourself that your creativity is not who you are, not what defines you.
HB: Yes, my creativity isn't my worth. But sometimes, it feels like it is because of my job.
JS: I read in a C.S. Lewis book, “The Great Divorce,” where the souls of the damned were visiting heaven. It's their last chance to repent, and there is this conversation with two painters. One of them says that they don't need painting anymore. When they were on earth, their paintings were from God's grace, giving them an image of heaven, of what it’s going to be. As artists, we get these creative images from God, and it’s something we can’t conjure up ourselves. The level of spirituality and the level of creativity in a person aren't related in an obvious way because you can have an incredible relationship with God, and he might not be giving you any creative visions. That's okay, that's his plan for you right now, and it might be really frustrating, but ultimately, he is the most important thing.
DB: What projects are you working on right now or that you've just finished recently?
HB: For the past few years, we've been choreographing a piece every Easter and Christmas for our church. It's fun because some of our company members go to the same church, but it's very different from when we're choreographing in the studio. The audience is so different, and what they're expecting is so different. It’s more like praise dance and with more obvious choreography than what we’re used to.
We're also choreographing a piece for the youth company at our studio. The music is live, and it's a jazzy kind of orchestral piece called “Reflections on Hymn.” The composer wrote it about his mentor who wrote the hymn. It's a reflection on his mentor, who was reflecting on God through his hymn. But before we knew that, we felt this should be a homage to the high school seniors, who are graduating and leaving. It's about the reflections and the cycle of passing down, the seniors passing things down to the younger girls.
JS: With Ekklesia, there was the Living Stories project that Hope talked about earlier, where it was about highlighting the stories of immigrants and refugees and connecting their stories in the form of poetry to music and to dance. Then, we had our guest artist Pater, who we talked about earlier, choreograph a piece on Psalm 126. That's about the idea of waiting for God to do something. It’s about how our attention is our confession. Are we trusting God with the hard things, or are we worrying more than is proportional to what we're able to do? Elisa is also choreographing another series of works called “A Global Housewarming Party,” which is a more lighthearted way to welcome people into the space. It's choreographed to live music, so we're collaborating with local artists, and that's a very fun process.
DB: Hope, in your artist’s bio, you said that you're an advocate for the transformative power of dance for all people, which I thought sounded really beautiful. I wanted to hear a bit more about that, and Jacob, you can obviously chime in as well.
[Advocating for the transformative power of dance for all people is] about changing the traditional ways that dance is accessed… It’s creating more ways for people to access dance that don't either cost them money or make them feel not worthy enough. In my teaching, I try to be as open and inviting as possible, and to create a space where joy is furthered. I want everyone to experience what dance has given to me.
HB: It’s about changing the traditional ways that dance is accessed. Rather than the traditional, “Here's your performance, audience pays to sit and watch,” it’s creating more ways for people to access dance that don't either cost them money or make them feel not worthy enough. In my teaching, I try to be as open and inviting as possible, and to create a space where joy is furthered. I want everyone to experience what dance has given to me. I didn't even think about this when I was joining Ekklesia, but most of our shows are free, and most of our work is performed in really accessible places. We'll perform at a lot of churches or outdoor stages where it's not as closed off as it would be on a traditional stage. I want dance to be something that everyone can enjoy instead of it being what sometimes it can be: driven by expectations around what it should be and how much it should cost and who should be allowed to see it. I'm still trying to figure out how to live this out.
JS: It's really easy for people in dance to let feelings of inadequacy—and this idea of what a perfect dancer should be—crowd them out of the space and take away their joy. Meanwhile, it's really easy for people outside of dance to just think of it as this superfluous space where people run around in tutus. But then there are the people who really allow themselves to be moved by the movement of others, and that's what we're trying to make there be more of.
HB: During COVID-19, I had visions of getting everybody who was alone together and just dancing, basically.
DB: My final question is just do you have any advice for other creatives who may also have a faith or spiritual practice? Or any advice for anybody wanting to pursue dance or learn more about dance?
JS: One piece of advice is to focus on what is good and beautiful and right in your mind and what inspires awe in you more than what drags you down. Also know what scares you away. It's important to write about negative things that impact you, but I find that I can't write creatively and satisfyingly while I am in that negative headspace.
HB: There are two things that you should try to get rid of as fast as possible: Pride and jealousy. My pride actually comes out in low self-esteem. Those things can really destroy your ability to be who you are and know who you are in Christ, and to know that you're not your dancing. You're not even what everyone sees of you. In harboring those feelings, you're hindering your relationship with God and separating yourself from what you want and need.
Last year's lesson was making space for creativity, even if that means you're making less money. Don't work five jobs, even though it might feel like you have to. And obviously, if you have to, you have to, but if there's any way to not overwork yourself, don't, because it will burn you out. Run away from being burnt out more than you run toward pushing yourself. Burnout does not help your creativity; it just slashes it. So if you want to be more creative, then allow yourself space not only to be creative but to spend time with God. Do the two of those things as much as you can.
DB: Thank you both so much. This has been a really insightful and moving conversation. I’m just really excited about the work you guys are doing and can't wait to keep hearing about it all.
