Episode Summary:
In the second episode of the Spiritual Dance Podcast, Carla White Crowe shares in detail her journeys with both spirituality and dance as well as what happened in her life when she began to weave those two worlds together. This episode also chronicles the creation and work of Fueled & Aflame Dance Company - the nonprofit arts organization Carla founded and ran for two decades.
Episode Transcript:
INTRO: Welcome to the Spiritual Dance Podcast. A virtual space for creative souls discovering how to move in sync with the rhythm of spirit. I’m your host Carla White Crowe, also known as The Dancing Oracle. In this podcast, I share openly about my journey of weaving together my two primary passions - spirituality and dance. My intention is to encourage and inspire spiritual seekers in pursuit of a more embodied form of spirituality as well as provide insight and tools for those seeking to expand their creative edges in service to the world of spirit.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Spiritual Dance Podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to share in detail my journey with both dance and spirituality, as well as what happened in my life when I began to weave those two worlds together.
Before we dive in, I do want to take a moment to offer a mild trigger warning for anyone who is deconstructing or has cut ties with evangelical Christianity. This particular podcast episode shares in detail my experiences from 25 years of involvement with that particular religion, and mentions certain theological doctrines concerning hell, sin, and salvation. So please trust your own inner wisdom about whether or not you should continue listening. I think it's helpful to note also that I won't be diving fully into my deconstruction story until the next episode.
Also, I want to point out that the overall goal of this podcast is to be an educational resource for those interested in the topics and practices that fall under the umbrella of spiritual dance. It is not at all my intention for this podcast to be centered around deconstruction or religious trauma. In fact, I would much rather not talk about it at all because I have done the work to heal and move on with my life. But ultimately, it is a part of my story, and I feel it's helpful for you to understand the events that made me who I am today.
So let's just start at the beginning…
I was the child who never stopped dancing. For as far back as I can remember, I was always moving and grooving - performing for anyone who would watch.
I grew up watching musical TV shows such as Kids Incorporated and Jem and the Holograms. I wanted to be a performer just like the characters in those shows. Eventually, I moved on to MTV and VH1 music videos. I was particularly drawn to artists like Madonna, Paula Abdul, and Janet Jackson. I mean, the Rhythm Nation tour felt life-changing to my pre-teen heart. I was slightly obsessed with Tina Landon, who was Janet Jackson's choreographer. The pieces that she created were amazing, and I remember feeling this strong desire to create dances like that one day.
As far as technical training goes, I got a little bit of a late start. I started taking classes at a local dance studio when I was 12. The studio owner noticed that I had a natural ability for both learning dance techniques as well as creating dances. By my second year, I was stepping into classroom assistant roles and being offered opportunities for choreographing both competitive pieces and dances for the studio's annual recital.
I was also the child who marveled at the night sky and danced with the ocean. For as long as I can remember, I've always felt this magnetic pull to explore the unseen world. It didn't come from growing up in a church or a religious environment, but rather from spending time in nature and engaging with the elements.
I grew up in Central Florida and my family would visit the ocean often. Every time I plunged into the water, I felt transported to another realm. I would imagine that I was a dolphin or a mermaid, and I would move in sync with the energy that I felt swirling all around me, co-creating magical dance performances with the sea. Cue the song “How Far I'll Go” from Moana. Which, by the way, when I first saw that movie, it stirred up something so deep within me that I literally wailed from an overflow of emotions that bubbled up to the surface in the middle of that scene. And I will never forget the look on the faces of my child and my best friend as I tried to repress that overflow of emotion.
I also spent a lot of time in nature through family camping trips, Girl Scouts, and YMCA programs. Being in the forest made me feel held in a way that brought me immense comfort. I always felt like the trees were speaking to me and guiding me. However, my favorite part of camping was sitting by the fire. The smell, the colors, and the way that the flames would dance. It lit me up from the inside and made me want to move alongside it.
In elementary school, I was always checking out library books on the solar system and space exploration. The subject of astronomy had a strong pull on me, and I had dreams of becoming an astronaut one day. Part of that had to do with frequent trips to the space center at Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast, as well as the movie Space Camp.
As I moved into junior high, my interests shifted towards more esoteric and occult topics. I checked out library books on subjects such as witchcraft, mediumship, and astral travel. This was somewhat of a secret curiosity for me for a few years. I don't remember anyone telling me it was wrong, it just felt taboo for some reason. I didn't really have any friends talking about those things. It was just something I felt this pull to explore on my own.
I didn't have a whole lot of experience in a church environment as a kid. We visited a few different churches, either on holidays or when I would visit my dad's parents. But my family didn't have a home church that we visited every Sunday. I vaguely remember my parents trying to get us involved in a Southern Baptist church at one point, but it didn't last long. I think partly because whenever we went there, my sister and I would throw a fit. Neither of us enjoyed dressing up or the formality of the service. It felt boring and stuffy. It just wasn't fun for us.
But then in high school, a boy I was dating invited me to watch him play in a band at his local Christian youth group. The youth group events felt like a modernized type of church service. It was much more enjoyable than my previous church experiences. I still wasn't interested in listening to sermons or reading the Bible, but there was something about the worship time that drew me in. I enjoyed singing and swaying with others, especially because the music was much more appealing than the old-fashioned hymns that were played in regular services, at least the ones I experienced. The contemporary songs were catchy and the lyrics felt more relatable. Those charismatic melodies lulled me into another dimension, one where I was connecting with supernatural energies that were speaking to me in ways that I didn't yet understand.
I had developed a close relationship with the youth pastor's wife. She had become like a big sister to me. She took me under her wing and mentored me in spiritual things. She knew I was a dancer and really wanted to find a way to showcase my gifts in the church. One year later, I was given an opportunity to dance in that church's Christmas pageant. I performed an impromptu lyrical dance to “Mary, did you know?” In those three minutes on stage, I experienced something that felt so much bigger than me. Something mysterious and magical. It felt like some kind of out-of-body experience, and I remember having trouble coming back into reality afterwards. It felt like a part of me was floating around outside of my body. That moment left a big question mark in my spirit. But again, I was too young to really understand what had happened.
In that same season, I had decided to lay down my dance training in order to participate in my high school's color guard and winter guard programs. I really loved exploring the world of props, twirling, and spinning flags. It felt like an extension of my own energy. It brought movement to life on a whole other level. I could expand my movements in ways that I couldn't do with my body alone. I also loved the way it added a unique and exciting visual element to my performances.
As I moved into college, I decided to return to my formal training by majoring in dance. In all honesty, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. But my boyfriend was going away to college and I didn't want to be apart from him. This, by the way, was a different guy than the one that initially took me to church. This guy was the one that I married and we are still very happily married to this day.
So I chose dance as a major because it was the only thing that interested me. In those four years that I spent as a dance major - I still look back on as some of the best years of my life. I had no idea there was so much to learn about dance outside of the studio classroom. I took classes in dance history, kinesiology, stage productions, voice, acting, and dance composition. I even minored in business, which helped me discover a whole new passion that I didn't realize I had.
Spiritually speaking, college was sort of a confusing time. I was enjoying my newfound freedom and living it up to the fullest. But also still trying not to stray from my faith and chosen spiritual path as an evangelical Christian. I tried to join a few different spiritual groups on campus, but I just remember feeling so icky in those meetings. Looking back, I believe my body was trying to communicate with me. From where I stand now, I'm glad I listened to her. But back then, my choice to not be a part of those groups made me question if there was something wrong with me. In a lot of ways, I felt like I was living a double life, and that came with an enormous amount of shame and self-loathing. Part of me wishes I could go back in time and pull that shame right off of 19-year-old me, but ultimately it was a journey that I needed to take.
In my junior year of college, I choreographed a solo as part of the final exam for one of my dance composition classes. When I performed that solo, I experienced the same mystical out-of-body feeling as I did in that Christmas pageant performance back in high school, but this time it was magnified. I sensed other energetic or perhaps angelic beings with me on stage as I danced. It was like a curtain had been pulled back and I could see another world, one that couldn't be seen with human eyes. I still didn't really understand what was happening in that moment, but once again, it had a deep and profound impact on me, one that compelled me to seek out the answers to what I was experiencing.
Towards the end of my junior year, I saw a performance by a professional ballet company called Ballet Magnificat. What I saw that night was not only technically spectacular, but the theme was also deeply moving. The title of the particular ballet I saw was Savior, and it was a staged retelling of key stories and themes from the Bible. I had never experienced art of that caliber that was also spiritual in nature. I didn't know that there was such a thing as professional Christian dance companies. But that night, I felt like I had been given a glimpse into the future that I was destined to create.
During my senior year of college. I went on a deep dive into exploring the connection between spirituality and the arts. I studied all the biblical scriptures about dance, and I even found a local organization called the Christian Dance Network that taught dance classes from a spiritual perspective. That organization became a key resource for me, helping me to network with other people doing work in the realm of the sacred arts. Additionally, thanks to this relatively new thing called the internet, it was 1999, y'all. I was able to find and connect with people all over the world who had dance ministries, either within their church or in their local or regional community.
In case you're unfamiliar with the term dance ministry - in Christian communities, at least in the ones I was a part of, dance ministry is a term used to describe a group of people who gather to learn and perform dances that are created with the goal of furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Typically, they perform during the praise and worship time in their regular church services and/or during special events or seasonal celebrations. There are also dance ministries that exist outside of a particular church or even a denomination, and those are more community-oriented, performing at festivals and/or other local events in order to reach a larger audience. Whatever the occasion, the purpose of those dance ministry performances is to inspire others in such a way that they would want to become a devoted Christ follower. And in the specific evangelical denomination that I was a part of, there was also an emphasis on saving those who were lost by convincing them to turn from their sinful ways so they wouldn't burn in hell for all eternity. Often there is even an altar call immediately following the performance for those who feel compelled to give their life to Jesus in that very moment. Conversion to Christianity was the primary goal of a dance ministry performance, and my young adult self believed wholeheartedly that that was a worthy cause.
Spoiler alert: I have a very different set of beliefs today, so if any of that was hard to hear, please try to hang with me. To be clear, I no longer align with the particular theology I was taught to believe concerning hell, salvation, and the practice of evangelism. In fact, I currently believe those ideas and practices to be quite harmful. So if you are someone who believes in those things, well then this podcast, and more specifically this episode might not be a good fit for you. I firmly believe that we all have a right to form our own spiritual beliefs, and I also think it's vitally important to respect other's beliefs. But I do not in any way, shape or form believe it's okay to force your beliefs on someone else, however righteous a cause you think it might be. I believe in personal sovereignty and autonomy, and I think it's both ignorant and arrogant to profess that there is only one way, one specific religious path to the divine.
However, there are still many aspects of that world that are foundational to the work I do today. The idea of being of service to something greater than myself, and helping others deepen their spirituality through divinely inspired movement and choreography is still my primary focus and mission. My specific spiritual beliefs, however, are a lot more expansive and inclusive than they used to be. Anyway, I digress, so let's get back to the topic we left off at - Dance Ministries.
In that season of research and networking, there were a few things that stood out to me that I didn't quite understand. Most of the dance ministries I observed were extremely limited in their movement vocabulary. Many of the dancers were in need of some basic technical training, if for no other reason than to be able to execute the moves they were doing safely. The music they used often felt outdated and their costume choices seemed overly modest. I also encountered a lot of judgment around some of the more worldly styles, such as jazz and hip hop, two styles which I was wildly passionate about because of their fiery nature.
I was aware that my experience in a mainstream university setting was vastly different than that of a church or a religious setting. Obviously, there are different goals and beliefs within those two worlds when it comes to dance. But I had witnessed the beauty and the power that came from blending good technique, modern music, and costuming with a spiritual focus back in that Ballet Magnificat performance. And I too wanted to create something with a similar level of caliber and impact.
I longed to be a part of the Christian dance communities that I had connected with, but there was also a part of me that was slightly frustrated by their culture and traditions. I wanted to infuse their repertoire and activities with modern music and costuming, and also utilize some different and perhaps more entertaining dance styles. But most of these organizations were pretty set in their ways, and/or afraid that my modern ideas would risk losing the support of their church leadership or their congregation. Which, to be fair, was a very real possibility. And so it became quite clear to me that if I wanted to do things my way, I would have to walk my own path.
As a senior dance major, I was required to present a thesis paper on my chosen research topic in addition to a staged performance project. My senior thesis document contained a detailed account of everything I had learned about the spiritual dance world, specifically focusing on the history and current uses of dance in Christian communities and churches. In my senior performance project, I was able to put my own contemporary spin on spiritual dance. I utilized modern music and costuming as well as popular dance styles. Also, because my dancers were all college dance majors, I was able to create technically advanced pieces that portrayed the biblical stories and themes my heart longed to share with my audience.
My senior performance project was a hit and I had several people ask me to present it again at various churches and community events following that performance. I felt excited about the interest and the feedback I got. Many of the dancers who performed in my production also wanted to continue dancing with me. So upon graduating, I decided to start my own dance company, which I named Fueled and Aflame.
The name came from a Bible verse out of the Message Bible. It was Romans 12:11 which said, “don't burn out, keep yourself fueled and aflame.” I hired a designer to create a logo for me, which became a dancer in the shape of a flame with gradient rainbow colors. To this day, I still find myself motivated and encouraged by that verse and logo. And thankfully so, since it's tattooed on my spine. I also think it's quite ironic that my logo was a flaming rainbow. But we'll get into that topic in the next episode.
My dance company became my baby. I poured my heart and soul into her. Within the first year, we had a multitude of opportunities to teach classes and workshops and perform all over Southeast Michigan. As the Artistic Director, I was able to create and produce full-length, staged, and spiritually-inspired dance works. Being able to see my dreams come true right out of college felt amazing. And as the organization grew, I started receiving invitations to consult with other Christian dance ministries in order to provide support and tools for growing their organizations.
As I continued to further my dance career after college, I kept pushing up against a pretty big divide and even some prejudice between mainstream dance communities and spiritual dance communities. That really bothered me because I saw the value offered in both of those worlds, and so bridging that gap became somewhat of a secondary mission in my work with Fueled and Aflame, I wanted my professional dance friends and colleagues to understand the level of depth and meaning that could be found from bringing dance into a spiritual setting. At the same time, I wanted my Christian dance friends to see the value in pursuing technical excellence. I would often find myself preaching to both camps on that topic. My company eventually adopted the tagline teaching dancers how to worship and worshippers how to dance.
The organization took on a life of its own and even survived an out-of-state move with a two-year pause while I birthed two incredible humans into this world. By 2010, I decided it was time to expand once again by opening a dance studio and dance retail boutique. Our home had a large garage with a separate entrance that my husband and I renovated into a proper studio space. Word spread quickly and after one season we had outgrown my home studio.
My church graciously allowed us to renovate an unused portion of their building so that I could run my studio out of there. The new urban location brought us many new families. Even though it was a lot of work, I truly loved running those businesses. The studio was more successful than I ever imagined it could be. I had also designed the perfect funnel to bring new dancers into my performing company. In fact, we had so much interest in the company that by the end of the studio's second year, we decided to launch a youth dance company. And by the end of Fueled & Aflame’s lifespan, we were running three different youth companies in addition to our adult company, dance studio, and retail boutique. It was an incredible accomplishment.
Looking back, one thing I was always incredibly proud of was the technical and spiritual diversity that was a part of my dance company's culture. Whenever possible, we did our best to include those with natural abilities and/or determination who wanted to be a part of the performing company but had little to no access to technical dance training in their youth. This was also one of my reasons for wanting to open a studio to help bridge that gap. We also added apprentice and trainee positions to provide additional opportunities for accelerated growth. As a choreographer, I gained a lot of valuable skills while catering to a group of dancers with varying skill sets. I learned how to create dances that highlighted everyone's strengths.
Spiritually speaking, Christianity in and of itself is really segmented into different groups with vastly different beliefs and even though spiritual diversity means something completely different to me today, back then it was radical to have Lutherans, Methodists, and even Catholics joining together with nondenominational Christians united together in a worship environment. We had built this beautiful sacred arts community where we listened and learned from each other, one where we celebrated and saw value in each other despite our differences. Little did I know that value would one day bring massive and difficult changes to my world.
As much as I loved teaching, choreographing, and producing spiritually inspired dance productions, those activities felt very different than the two mystical experiences I had had in my younger years. While there was nothing wrong with the work I was doing, personally it just felt like something was missing. I just had a hunch that there was so much more for me to explore on the topic of spiritual dance.
Let me rewind to the summer of 2000. Shortly after graduating from college, I attended a Christian dance intensive in Texas. I found camaraderie in this community of professional dancers who fused spirituality into their artistic work. It was there that I found myself in a class with a woman who was teaching what she called prayer dance. She spoke about dance being a language that surpassed communication barriers, and also how the language of spirit could not be fully expressed with words. She shared her methods of transforming prayers into a living, breathing, moving petition. After an extensive time of teaching and demonstration, she danced her own uniquely inspired movement prayers over each student, one by one.
That class was a pivotal, life-altering moment for me. The experience of having another human directing their movements toward me in such a kind, compassionate, and spiritually focused manner completely shifted my mental and emotional states. I was on the receiving end of a powerful spiritual practice - one I had never heard of, and one that utilized the thing I loved most in this world - dance. I had been prayed for many times in my life prior to that moment, but the impact of this whole-body prayer felt way more powerful and potent than prayers that had been spoken over me with words. I could literally feel the energy being shifted in and all around me.
Most of my experience with dance up until that moment had been focused on entertaining or inspiring others. I had learned about dance as a therapeutic tool in college, and I even had friends pursuing dance therapy as a major. But dance as a healing modality within a spiritual context, well that was something I had never considered.
I came home from that summer dance intensive, wanting to fully explore this new concept, to discover all the ways that dance could support and enhance one's personal spiritual journey as well as their well-being. So I brought the practice of prayer dance into my own dance company rehearsals, and we began to explore and expand upon it. At the end of each rehearsal, we would dim the lights and play some slow worship music and just kind of see what happened.
In the beginning, there was a lot of improvisational movement that was happening, mostly in response to the music that we had selected. We transitioned to instrumental music, so the words were less of a distraction. And then after a lot of experimentation, we started to add a bit of structure, which really helped us to focus our intentions. And that's when things got interesting. Many of the women in my company began having supernatural experiences that we couldn't really explain with words. Several even proclaimed healing from certain ailments or afflictions.
One year later, I attended a Christian dance conference in Indiana where I learned an exercise called flocking. In its most basic form, this was a kind of structured improv activity where one person moves and the rest follow. It was taught to us in a V formation, inspired by the way geese fly and move together as a group. The dance ministry I learned this from had expanded upon it so much that they were able to use this particular tool to create full-length pieces that looked choreographed, cleaned, and polished, but it was all made up on the spot. They were utilizing preset cues that they had practiced extensively ahead of time so that they were in sync as a group. These cues communicated specific methods for traveling, moving, and even how to transition their formations.
The practice of flocking was kind of a game-changer for my company. It served us in so many ways, especially once we began to adapt it to fit our needs. Engaging in this exercise helped us to expand our own individual creativity, as well as learn new ways of moving from one another. It also served to deepen the interpersonal connections within our group. And eventually, it became our signature introductory exercise. Anytime we would practice or teach worship dance, which is what I called spiritual dance back in the day, we would always begin with flocking because it seemed to help people ease into the practice effortlessly.
When a dancer was in the lead position in the front of the V, it was up to them to move however they felt led. Our intention was always to get people to connect with spirit on a deeper level, to feel as if spirit was leading them in the movement, rather than making up steps based on prior knowledge or training. After a while of doing this exercise together, the dancers in my company began to pick up on each other's unique movement styles. So when someone started moving in a way that they had never moved before, we noticed! Essentially what was happening was we were learning how to channel spirit with our bodies. Once I realized this, I felt a responsibility to steward this practice. To study, to document and to refine it so that others could benefit from it as well.
We started to become more intentional with our process. We would begin by focusing our minds on connecting to spirit and asking for wisdom, messages, and divine revelation. Then, as we began to receive insight from spirit, we would draw that information down into this plane, expressing it through our bodies with movement. This process, which I now call channeled movement, is one of the primary things that I teach today. And again, it's not something I was taught, it’s something that my company and I discovered together through creative exploration and dedication to this craft.
Working with and developing a process for teaching. Channeled movement was the beginning of a whole new chapter in my life. I will go into this more in the next episode, but my personal spiritual journey had taken a turn into spaces that were exploring the supernatural. I was really drawn to learning about prophetic church culture and prophetic teachings. As my spirituality evolved, so did my spiritual dance practices.
Around 2010, I decided to help out with my church's prayer team. Praying for people after the church service made me a little nervous because words didn't always come easy for me, at least English ones. I could pray in tongues easily. But they needed more help and I wanted to be of service. Even though prayer dance was something I had been doing for almost a decade, I had never really done it outside of my own spiritual dance community, and definitely not in church. As much as I tried, I couldn't stop my body from moving while I was praying for others. I wasn't entirely sure if that type of prayer would be well received by the church, but luckily the church staff was super supportive and they trusted me to give it a try. The people I prayed for loved the movement prayers, and eventually, it just became known that if you chose to receive prayer ministry specifically from me, it would come in the form of movement.
Part of the prayer team protocol was to give the person receiving prayer a chance to respond and share any insight they received during the prayer time. Often, the person being prayed for would be overcome with emotion, offering words of gratitude afterward for the unique way in which spirit spoke to them while I was dancing. For the most part, either the receiver or my prayer team partner would have an interpretation for the specific movement that I did. I was always in awe of those interpretations and sometimes a little jealous.
Back then, I didn't understand the importance of grounding, and so I would just kind of mentally float away into a trance-like state while channeling movement through my body. It often took a lot of effort to come back into my body once the movement messages stopped flowing through me. And then one day I heard spirit say, “if you want to know the meaning of your movement, all you have to do is ask.” Could it really be that simple? Well, yes. Yes it was. So I began to ask and spirit began to speak.
After years of asking and journaling, I began to notice recurring movements, messages, and themes. By this time I was teaching worship dance classes weekly and often hosting monthly workshops and annual conferences. I was teaching my processes for channeled movement and prophetic dance anywhere and everywhere that I could, and I was doing it with dancers and nondancers alike. I had discovered that it was a practice that anyone could do, as long as they were open to it, and as long as they weren't afraid of moving their body in front of others. The exercises I taught were simple, gesture-like - making it accessible even to those with physical disabilities. For those who wanted to grow in this practice, I incorporated the flocking exercise to help broaden their movement vocabulary. Flocking looked somewhat different with nondancers, but I was able to adapt it to work with any skill level.
By 2016, I had accumulated a notebook full of activation exercises and curriculum on a wide variety of spiritual dance topics. I had poured so much time and energy into these discoveries and methods, and I was eager to share them with the world. I was so incredibly happy, not only with the way my dance career had grown and flourished, but also with this sense of purpose and fulfillment that came from leading, guiding, and serving others through spiritual dance practices. It felt like I was on top of the world. But by the end of 2019, it had all come crashing down on top of me. I had no choice but to walk away from a 20-year career that meant everything to me.
And that, my friends, is a story for another podcast. I don't mean to leave you all with a cliffhanger, but this episode is already longer than I intended it to be. If you simply cannot wait, there is a version of that story over on my YouTube channel. Just search for a video called “My Story Part One.” For now, take care friends, and I will catch you in the next episode.
OUTRO: Thank you for taking the time to listen to my podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would greatly appreciate a positive rating and review. This helps others find me so I can support and inspire as many humans as possible. If you would like to learn more about my work, please visit www.thedancingoracle.com - there you can book an intuitive reading or embodied coaching session and find out about my upcoming events. You can also sign up for my mailing list to be notified of my upcoming course and book launches on the topic of Dance Divination. Until next time, be well friends and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
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