In his new book, The Dance of We, Mark Horowitz draws from his many years of work in psychology and as an organizational development consultant to explain the powerful systemic forces that impact us in our families, our workplaces and our social and political systems. Using humor, current events, and stories from his own life, including his early years in a cult, the author describes four characteristics of dysfunctional human systems and four principles for balancing love and power in order to make those systems more Life-affirming.

In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange’s ability to blend movement with words when her acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf made its way to Broadway in 1976, eventually winning an Obie Award the following year. But before she found fame as a writer, poet, performer, dancer, and storyteller, she was an untrained student who found her footing in others’ classrooms. Dance We Do is a tribute to those who taught her and her passion for rhythm, movement, and dance. After 20 years of research, writing, and devotion, Ntozake Shange tells her history of Black dance through a series of portraits of the dancers who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her to share the power of the Black body with her audience. Shange celebrates and honors the contributions of the often unrecognized pioneers who continued the path Katherine Dunham paved through the twentieth century. Dance We Do features a stunning photo insert along with personal interviews with Mickey Davidson, Halifu Osumare, Camille Brown, and Dianne McIntyre. In what is now one of her final works, Ntozake Shange welcomes the reader into the world she loved best.

Liturgical dance is a way to present, reflect, instruct, learn, study, and share religious beliefs with one's self, within one's worship community, and with one's God. Such a belief is confirmed and witnessed within a variety of religious settings throughout the world from the beginning of time to this present age. However, there is a vacuum of resources that connect liturgical dance within the Christian context as a tool for religious learning within the field of religious education. With the continual rise of liturgical dance as an artistic form of expression, this book proposes that liturgical dance offers unique attributes conducive to the teaching and learning of faith and to faith formation. Kathleen S. Turner shows how liturgical dance is religious education in two very important ways: first, by addressing the power and potential liturgical dance has in nourishing the faith life of Christian congregants through means that are both educative and reflective; and second, by giving examples of how liturgical dance can be implemented as a religious-education tool within the teaching life of the church.

Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.