Shaking Philadelphia Churches
with Dance and Sound
By Karen DiLossi, Director of Arts in Sacred Places
and Chad Martin, Director of the National Fund for Sacred Places
Partners for Sacred Places
Fist and Heel Performance
Group performing “....they
stood shaking while others
began to shout” at Church
of the Advocate.
Credit: Daniel Kontz
T
his past May, audience members gathered in anticipa-
tion outside the big red doors at Church of the Advocate
in North Philadelphia. They formed a single-file line at
the direction of performance artist David Brick, then reverently
proceeded on a “silent walk” to observe the space around them.
Upon entering, they stepped into one of the city’s most magnifi-
cent and historically significant sacred places. As reporter Megan
Voeller noted, covering the performance for the news website
Hyperallergic,
The church is known for the large-scale paintings in
its sanctuary that depict African-Americans’ struggles
against white supremacy [and] reflect a time when the
church also hosted national Black Power conferences and
the first ordination of women in the Episcopal Church.
Today, it is active in the fight against neighborhood
gentrification, which in recent years has claimed his-
toric Black churches in other parts of the city.
The evening’s performance included three dance pieces: The
first was a tender father-daughter performance of Brick’s piece,
May I enter the space? The audience then moved to the intimate
baptistry for Germaine Ingram’s Souls a-Stirring, followed by the
Fist and Heel Performance Group’s ...they stood shaking while
others began to shout, which filled the sanctuary physically and
emotionally with movement and sound inspired by centuries of
black spiritual practices, with a special focus on those practices in
America.
Thus began the performances and explorations of Grounds
That Shout! (and others merely shaking), a multi-layered and
collaborative project focused on a series of modern dance pieces
inspired and informed by, and performed in and around, four
historic sacred places in Philadelphia. Public performances led by
Reggie Wilson, project curator and artistic director, took place
across the first two weeks in May, though the project was rooted
in years of the curator’s own reflection and choreography about
the relationship between dance and African-American religious
experience.
SACRED PLACES • SUMMER 2019
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