Sacred Dance Guild

10/12/2025

Join us for Sacred Sunday next week with Claire Elizabeth Barratt - "Dancing the Chakras: a series of movement and vocal meditations for each chakra." Register now via Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/TXoKmC1hSZy_TF8PNv66kw

From Claire: This year I have been working on a performative meditation project with my performance art/life mentor Linda Mary Montano. For many years her performance work has been deeply rooted in the chakras and together we collaborated on developing a Chakra Dance Meditation this past spring for the Religion & Art conference in London (produced by Goldsmiths University) and performed it again this summer in upstate New York.

Through developing the chakra dances I have discovered a rich source of spiritual creativity that I am excited to share with my fellow Sacred Dance Guild members in the Sacred Sunday session this month.

The Chakras come from an ancient South Asian Indian tradition of energy centers in the body. They have been integrated into Hindu, Buddhist and Yogic practices.
In my explorations into the chakras I discovered ways to personalize these energy centers and what they symbolize so that they feel relevant to me. And it is from this personal aspect that I will approach guiding our Chakra Meditations together.

Participants are welcome to bring scarves of the chakra colors to the workshop:
RED - Root - survival, safety, grounding
ORANGE - Sacral - sensuality, creativity, emotions
YELLOW - Solar Plexus - confidence, strength, assertiveness
GREEN - Heart - love, compassion, forgiveness
BLUE - Throat - communication, expression, articulation
PURPLE - Third Eye - intuition, wisdom, visions
WHITE - Crown - spiritual connection and consciousness
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Claire Elizabeth Barratt (artist moniker CillaVee) is a British interdisciplinary performing artist based in the USA. She is the director of international arts organization Cilla Vee Life Arts, established Bronx NY 2002, and has run The Center for Connection + Collaboration from her home in Asheville, NC since 2020. She has received a number of awards, including project sponsorship from JP Morgan Chase, NYSCA and the NEA. She served an apprenticeship with the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation and holds an MFA in Creative Practice from the Transart Institute for Creative Research with Plymouth University where she developed the Living Art performance pedagogy. She was a Co-Founder and Director for Circle Modern Dance and a Choreographer for the Knoxville Opera Company in Tennessee and performed as a dancer with Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater and for Unto These Hills outdoor drama on the Cherokee Indian reservation in North Carolina. Claire has presented work through organizations such as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Bronx Council on the Arts, Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center and Art Basel Miami, as well as continuing as a member and facilitator with the international Sacred Dance Guild since 1997 – becoming a Legacy Project approved facilitator in 2024.
She has performed and taught throughout the USA and in Canada, Europe, Japan and the Middle East. cillavee.com

https://sacreddanceguild.org/

09/13/2025

Our online festival has begun! Our Programs Co-Director Debbie Donaldson led participants in an opening prayer movement, weaving each one of us together in our little virtual squares!

Registration still available! Sign up now to get access to our afternoon sessions beginning at 2:30PM Eastern and to get recordings of our two morning sessions!

https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/12/2025

It is not too late to register for tomorrow's Weaving the World of Sacred Dance online festival! Take a look at our event schedule:

Saturday, September 13th
Workshop # 1 - 10:00 am - Leah Mann
Workshop # 2 - 11:30 am - Betsey Beckman
Workshop # 3 - 2:30 pm - Melissa Michaels
Workshop # 4 - 4:00 pm - Celeste Snowber

Sunday, September 14th
AGM: 12:30-1:30
Workshop # 5 - 2:00 pm - Judith Rose
Workshop # 6 - 3:30 pm- Sylvia Bryant
Closing: 4:30

If you cannot attend any or all of the online sessions, all registered participants will receive access to the recordings the day after the event.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/11/2025

Weaving the World of Sacred Dance will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators (Leah Mann, Betsey Beckman, Judith Rose, Melissa Michaels, Celeste Snowber, Sylvia Bryant )! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop through Zoom.

If you cannot attend any or all of the online sessions, all registered participants will receive access to the recordings the day after the event. In addition to the workshops, there will be times for Gathering and Sharing with each other at the pre- and post-workshop times. As well, the Annual General Meeting will take place on Sunday, September 14th. The Sacred Dance Guild is a mission-based, non-profit, charitable trust dedicated to celebrating and advocating for dance as an expression of the sacred – in all of the ways it is experienced around the globe!

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/10/2025

Introducing our final presenter of our online festival- Sylvia Bryant!

"Dancing the Spirituals...an Amazing Grace” with Sylvia Bryant

Join us for an immersive workshop that weaves storytelling, spiritual songs, and liturgical dance into a transformative journey from Tuskegee, Alabama, to the Sacred Dance Guild—and out into the world. As a dance community, we will explore how the spirituals remind us of our roots, connect us to one another, and carry us forward with the power of Amazing Grace.

This interactive experience invites you to move, reflect, and embody the living legacy of the soul-stirring spirituals—songs that breathe life, history, healing, and hope. Through sacred dance, we honor the resilience of our ancestors while embracing the grace that sustains us today.

“Dancing the spirituals…can’t be lost. How will I ever know where to go if I don’t know where I’ve been?”
— Rev. Dr. Verolga Nix, Historian and Musician of African American Music

About the Facilitator: Sylvia B. Bryant is an accomplished dancer, teacher, and choreographer specializing in sacred and contemporary dance. A graduate of Tuskegee University and George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, she trained at the American Dance Festival with pioneers such as Martha Graham, José Limón, and Charles Weidman. She studied with the Alvin Ailey American Theater and Margaret Fisk Taylor-Doane, a trailblazer in sacred dance.

For more than five decades, she has been choreographing, teaching, and performing liturgical dance, including over 30 years in churches pastored by her husband, the late Rev. Fletcher Juan Bryant. Sylvia also directed dance programs at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has performed in professional exhibitions in New York, Baltimore, and London, with career highlights including performances at Wesley’s Chapel in London and the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

She is the author of Dancing Through the Christian Calendar and Dancing the Spirituals, works that established her as a preeminent liturgical dance choreographer. Founder and director of the Call to Worship Liturgical Dance Ensemble and a longtime member of the Sacred Dance Guild, Bryant continues to teach, choreograph, and share her passion for dance across the U.S. and internationally.

A retired administrator from the Montclair Public Schools in Montclair, New Jersey, she resides in Bethesda, Maryland, and continues to choreograph, teach, and perform. As the founder and director of the Call to Worship Liturgical Dance Ensemble, Mrs. Bryant travels and performs throughout the world. She is also a member of the Sacred Dance Guild, where she taught as a clinician at their annual festival.

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/09/2025

Introducing our fifth presenter of our online festival- Judith Rose!

Embodying the Esoteric Archetypes with Judith Rose

The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung developed the idea of Archetypes as modes of psychic behavior that have always been part of the collective human experience. Shakti peers into the mirror of creation. Krishna lures us with his magic "ute. Shiva launches his lightning bolt into the sky. Vishnu brings us into balance, while Buddha blooms in a state of pure enlightenment. We can become an Avatar, a Sacred Warrior, or a Queen. We can be a Moon in the Night Sky or a Shooting Star above. This unique session will open us to the joy and beauty of embodying these eternal archetypal enactments and uncovering their sacred relevance to the timeless human story and to the timely story of our own lives.

About the Facilitator: Judith Rose, founder of Vital Movement™, is an experienced educator, choreographer, poet, and movement artist. She has extensive training in a variety of movement arts and therapeutic modalities from around the globe. Insights drawn from her rich background in Jungian Studies, Literature, and World Mysticism are seamlessly integrated into her offerings. Judith is a certified practitioner of Otiyot Hayyot, a Kabbalistic mindfulness practice developed by Dr. Yehudit Goldfarb. She studied and trained with David Leventhal, the director of the Mark Morris Dance for Parkinson’s Disease program, which has inspired her to create a unique eldercare program. Judith is known for her distinct choreographic vision that is at the heart of her original workshops and movement journeys, which have travelled to studios in many universities, cultural institutions, and dance centers.

She often serves as a presenter for her beloved Sacred Dance Guild and also collaborates with other artists to create interdisciplinary works of distinction. Judith’s work is a passionate devotion that is deeply grounded in the belief that the arts provide a medium for personal and communal healing, joy, and transformation. www.judithroseVM.com

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/08/2025

Introducing our fourth presenter of our online festival- Celeste Snowber

Creating in Dangerous Times: Dancing and writing from our lived experience

This workshop explores the body as a place of listening and a portal to the inner life. The invitation is to break open what it means to honour the terrain of the body and cultivate creativity from the inside out. The focus will be on embracing the paradox and joy within our bodies. Through dance and improvisation, we will open pathways to your voice and ways to write from the body. I will build prompts for moving and writing from my recent book, Creating in Dangerous Times, which stirs us to reclaim our human birthright of creativity. Let a visceral creativity become a place of healing, courage, vulnerability, and a playful place for alchemy with ourselves and the divine.

About the Facilitator: Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD, is a dancer, poet/writer, and award-winning educator who is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University outside Vancouver, Canada. She has written extensively, and her books include Embodied Inquiry: Writing, living, and being through the body, three collections of poetry, and Dance, poetics, and place: Site-specific performance as a portal to knowing. Her most recent book (2025) is Creating in dangerous times. She has performed and spoken internationally at concert venues, galleries, conferences, and in various outdoor spaces, and is a frequent collaborator with other artists. Celeste can be found at www.celestesnowber.com or, more ideally, dancing between land and sea.

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/07/2025

Introducing our third presenter for our online festival- Melissa Michaels!

During this session, Melissa will share about Golden Girls Global, an initiative she birthed that brings together girls dancing as they come of age around the world. Melissa will share a short slide presentation about the dance-based work she developed, along with giving participants an experiential view into the work. Melissa will close with moving and insights about the work with young people in these times.

About the Facilitator: Melissa Michaels, Ed.D.
Soul midwife, educator, and artist, Melissa Michaels, Ed.D., is the Founder/Director of Golden Bridge and Golden Girls Global— two not-for-profit initiatives dedicated to improving and empowering the lives of diverse people through body-centered initiatory experiences, mentoring, and community action.

For 38 years, Melissa has been creating movement-based, cross-cultural educational opportunities, liberating the potential that is available during major life transitions. Her work somatically supports people as they navigate through the narrow passageways of these challenging times. This body of work grew from Melissa’s decades of guiding diverse young people from self to soul to service through dance-based rites of passage experiences.

Activists, artists, healers, and educators serving on every continent on the planet, Melissa’s mentees, SomaSource leaders, are creating innovative ways to work within some of the most marginalized communities around the world.
Together, they are devoted to our collective sustainability through the liberation of the creative spirit.

Her body of work includes the book, Youth on Fire: Birthing a Generation of Embodied Global Leaders; online moving journeys, including Thresholds; as well as her video narratives of resilient people and communities mobilizing around the world. Melissa’s award-winning film, Twisted Gift, shares her dancing journey through late-stage ovarian cancer into health.

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/06/2025

Introducing our second presenter at our online festival- Betsey Beckman!

Pilgrimage of Prayer Dances!

For nearly 20 years, I have had the honor of creating beautiful Prayer Dances Videos for Abbey of the Arts, many of them filmed in sacred wilderness outdoors. Each of the dances is created as a “Dance Along” with simple choreography to explore a variety of embodied moods, meditations, mystical encounters, and mysteries. In this mini-workshop, I will choose some of my favorites through the years and share the choreography for us to dance along in the mystery together. Hope you can join us for this dancing pilgrimage! (Please bring a feather to dance with if you are able.)

About the Facilitator: Betsey Beckman, MM, is nationally acclaimed as a spirited dancer, storyteller, teacher of SpiritPlay, and dancing Spiritual Director. With her extensive repertory of sacred storydances, she is regularly featured as artist/presenter at national conventions as well as local churches. She earned her Master’s in Ministry from Seattle University, her certificate in Movement Therapy from the Institute for Transformational Movement, and is a certified InterPlay leader. As dancer, choreographer, author, mother, wife, teacher, and spiritual director, she is passionate about living life fully and fostering creativity in all those with whom she shares life and ministry. Betsey’s publications include books (she is co-author of Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Expressive Arts to Spiritual Direction) and recordings – including producing the Abbey of the Arts CD collections and six series of DVDs on embodied prayer. Under the umbrella of The Dancing Word, Betsey offers the gift of playful improvisation whenever possible.

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/06/2025

One more week until our online festival- Weaving the World of Sacred Dance!

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

The Sacred Dance Guild is excited to bring you once again our online Festival where we will weave together an experience of connection around the globe! This year we are ...

09/05/2025

Introducing our first presenter for our online festival- Leah Mann!

Sanctuary: At Home In The Body with Leah Mann

This workshop will explore embodied resiliency and “thriving factors”. It is part of a multi-year multidisciplinary mind, body, spirit, art, science project exploring themes of sanctuary, safe space, belonging, peace, and healthy boundaries in the person, in the home, in the community, in the country, in the environment, and on the planet.

Participants will explore contemplative movement inspired by Kemetic Hieroglyphs; Hindu Mudra and Nyasa; Shinto Peace Rituals, and Christian Psalms. We will bring Okagasamade ( Japanese honoring of the ancestors, "I am because of you") as we explore inner sanctuary practices through time for this very moment.

About the Facilitator: Leah Okamoto Mann (she, they) is a multidisciplinary Asian American artist, educator, and activist. Leah is co-founder and artistic director emeritus of Moving in the Spirit; founder and former co-director of Lelavision Physical Music; and currently founder and director of Kintsugi Somatic Art, which integrates trauma-informed embodied practices of movement, music, storytelling, visual art, and improvisational play toward healing through workshops, performances, events, and artful communal experiences.

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/

09/04/2025

Sacred Dance Guild: Weaving the World of Sacred Dance 2025

Our celebration will take you on a journey of discovery with SIX individuals who have been approved as SDG Professional Facilitators! If you haven’t yet experienced these Sacred Dance Guild Treasures, this is a unique opportunity to dance into what will be an amazing sacred dance buffet! The ”Weaving the World of Sacred Dance Workshop“ will be an online workshop conducted via Zoom.

Register today! https://sacreddanceguild.org/programs/festivals/weaving-the-world-of-sacred-dance-sacred-dance-festival-2025/