2025 So Far

2025 at The Groove has been marked by a continued communal deep dive into

dance as a form of worship. We have explored this in our understanding of both

choreographed and spontaneous dance. This understanding has been a small

shift for our dance community— beginning to understand the nuance between

performing for the glory of God, and joining together with heaven in worship,

and how they intersect. The goal is that our dancers will grow deeper and

deeper into an understanding of both of these realities, and develop deeper

engagement with their Saviour through dance.

When we perform for the glory of God, we learn as a community the importance

of excellence. God never does anything halfway, and He has created us to

engage wholly with the mission He has sent us on. Whether that is really digging

into that hard math problem at school, having hard conversations with friends,

sharing the love of Jesus with others, or learning our choreography, we are

seeking to really engage our dancers in the deep knowledge that EVERYTHING

we do should be done to God’s glory—even the hard, tedious, and difficult stuff.

We have a lot of conversations during classes about mastering hard steps and

looking for strong technique, but doing it with a soft and moldable heart, never

with a sense of apathy or entitlement.

When we join with heaven in worship, the focus shifts to a heavier emphasis on

our heart posture. Worship isn’t just the songs you sing or how you dance, but

the way you use music or dance to really engage your whole heart, soul, and

body in an expression of praise. It is the intentional choice to abandon the “here

and now” and engage with the 24/7 worship session that is happening in heaven

right now. Not everyone can do a head spin in breakdance, but ANYONE can

dance in worship.

All the technical skills our dancers have gained through their choreography and

technical classes are tools in their tool belt that can be used for worship.

But it is ALWAYS about the position of our hearts above everything else.

We love to see all of our dancers engaging in worship from the very small

beginners to our older teenagers and dance teachers with years of experience.

We are growing into our understanding of this dual reality we live in as a faith-

based studio. We don’t want any of our classes to just be completely technical.

But we also don’t want to be slack on our technique because we aren’t a

competitive studio.

We should ALWAYS aim for excellence. We want to do it well because we are

doing it for Jesus. All of this is really a heart issue for us. If we perform our dances

flawlessly, but we don’t have a heart for sharing the love of Jesus with our audience,

it will all have been for naught.

On the other hand, if we want to share Jesus’s love, but we don’t know our dances,

and it looks like we only put half effort in, it isn’t a very good witness for the

One we desire to reflect.

We must learn to live in this dual reality, and ask for grace to walk it well.

We have grown as a ministry and a studio in the last year, and we have been

challenged to really put our best foot forward as stewards of what the Lord has

entrusted us with in this dance community. Our desire is to bring our dancers

along on this journey with us. We know that there is much to be learned, and

that there will be hard things along the way, but we feel a nudge from God to

step out in faith, trusting that as we challenge our dancers to move towards

excellence, we will ourselves be spurred on to the same.

Our prayer as we work this out, is for the glory of God to be seen through

what we are called to perform on a stage.