A BOSTON TRADITION: A Dancer's Christmas.

A Jesuit priest in Boston continues his order's little-known choreographic tradition with a Christmas pageant.

If it's Christmas and it's dance, it must be The Nutcracker. Unless you're in Boston. Of course, Boston has wonderful productions, large and small, of The Nutcracker, but there is also A Dancer's Christmas, a local holiday tradition for the past eighteen years with a choreographer who is a Jesuit priest.

When people ask me what I, a Jesuit priest, am doing, working in the world of dance, I suggest that they refer to the December 1978 issue of Dance Magazine and read the article "The Bible as Dance." There the author, Giora Manor, speaks of the Jesuit Biblical Ballet. It was here that I, a Jesuit priest and trained dancer and choreographer, discovered for the first time the role the Jesuits played in the history of dance. I am delighted to let those who wonder about a Jesuit priest-choreographer know that dance was an integral part of French and German Jesuit schools in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Any dance historian knows the contribution of Pere Claude Francois Menestrier, another Jesuit priest, in his 1682 Des Ballets anciens et moderne selon les regles du theatre, and it was even said during the time of Louis XIV that "there is no one like the Jesuits for doing pirouettes" (Judith Rock, Terpsichore at Louis-Le-Grand, 1996, p. 39).

This Jesuit started pirouetting at a very early age but did not study dance formally until my studies for the priesthood. The founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), said that one could "find God in all things." Jesuits have been involved in all of the art forms as painters, musicians, dramatists, and choreographers. I was fortunate in having the opportunity to study ballet and modern dance while I was studying philosophy and theology. More than any other human activity, dance revealed to me the wonder and mystery of God!

In 1971 there was a gathering of Jesuit artists from around the world at the University of Santa Clara. It was there, at the advanced age of twenty-one, that I had my first ballet class. It was breathtaking in its beauty, and I have been doing plies ever since. I began to train with Diana Morgan Welch; I continued to study in New York City and with Margot Parsons in Boston. In 1980 I began creating A Dancer's Christmas, which Christine Temin in the Boston Globe called the "religious alternative to The Nutcracker." Karen Campbell in the Boston Herald describes the experience as "colorfully festive, emotionally moving, and spiritually nourishing in its reminder of the true meaning of Christmas."

A Dancer's Christmas uses familiar stories and traditions to present the wonder of the season from a dancer's point of view. There is much beautiful music, character, magic, and mystery to the holiday that calls out for dance. We sing Christmas carols in churches and homes, but most people do not know that the term, carol, was derived from a dance form. The songs of this holiday call for movement and dance to accompany them! A medieval Christmas carol, "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day," uses the image of a divine-human dance to express the depth of the Christmas story.

This holiday is more than merely a fairy tale. There is a remarkable truth that is hidden in the Christmas season. God is at the heart of human life. The Christmas story is truly a tale of the heart, another kind of wonderful love story.

The first act of A Dancer's Christmas uses the stories of the Bible to bring to life the familiar characters that are usually read about or shown in tableaux. One of my earliest memories of Christmas performances was going each year to Radio City Music Hall to see its spectacular holiday show. I remember everyone dancing except Mary and Joseph. They were meant to be stationary. Not in A Dancer's Christmas! They are at the heart of the dance that tells the familiar story through the movements that express not only the narrative but also the emotional relationships among the characters.

In the latest reworking, the first act, "For All Time," is about Mary's memory of the transformative events in her life--The Annunciation, The Visitation, and The Birth--woven together with events from the adult life of Jesus. Everything is seen from her perspective her son's death. There is a complex juxtaposition of the story of Jesus birth and of His death. The image of a young Mary of Bethlehem, holding the newborn and surrounded by angels and shepherds, is seen downstage; in the background is a Pieta, the image of the mature Mary, holding her son's body after its removal from the Cross.

The second act takes place in medieval times, with marvelous music by the Boston Camerata. There are dancing monks and nuns, traveling players, jesters, angels, and a whole host of townspeople who witness the miracle of new birth. The piece is inspired by the medieval custom of players who went from town to town, performing mystery and miracle plays. In this story, the performers are dancers who delight their audiences each year with the wonderful and sometimes comical elements in the story of the birth of Jesus. Entitled "The Town of Miracles," this act invites the audience to enter another time and place to experience the timeless message of the Christmas story.

The third act, "Christmas Memory," is more contemporary and uses familiar carols woven together with images from my own childhood. This work is meant to connect with the experience of Christmas in all its joy and simplicity. The act begins with my memory of the fifth grade, when I was in charge of the Christmas pageant. As the class sang "O Holy Night," I fell to my knees--and all the other students did the same. I suppose it was my first piece of religious choreography! What follows is a suite of dances that evoke the spirit of Christmas through spiritual expression and communal celebration.

The choreography of A Dancer's Christmas is described by Campbell in her December 1996 review in the Boston Herald: "VerEecke's choreography is grounded in the long, graceful lines of ballet with the sweep and flow of modern dance. There are lyrical solos, a fairly traditional pas de deux, some fleet, dynamic ensembles for the men, and a lot of folk-inspired dances for the large group. Vereecke has a lovely sense of patterning, creating visually compelling shapes that range from subtly shifting lines to ecstatically swirling circles and spirals."

A Dancer's Christmas employs a cast of fifty adults and children. The cast includes some of Boston's finest, modern dancers, including Jamie and Nicole Huggins, Hamish and Janet Black.man, members of Prometheus Dance Company and Margot Parsons Modern Ballet Company, as well as David Moore (from New York City). There have been special guests, such as Andrew LeBeau from the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Peter Narbutas (formerly of the Joffrey), and Peter Pawlyshyn from Boston Ballet. Dennis O'Connor, a freelance artist, was in one of the earliest casts. In addition to the many professional Boston dancers, there are alumni and students from Boston College, where the Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble is the resident dance company. Many of these dancers have appeared in the productions for so long that their children are now cast members. Assistant director Carol Faherty has been involved since the ballet's inception, and her two children have been in the cast since they were infants.

A Dancer's Christmas, now in its eighteenth season, remains an aesthetic and spiritual experience. Thanks to this unique celebration of the holiday, thousands have experienced its true meaning through the beauty of music, story, and dance, woven together in a fabric to reveal the wonders of the Christmas story over the ages.

Performances are scheduled for December 11 to 13 and 18 to 20 at Boston College's Robsham Theater Arts Center, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; [phone].

Robert verEecke is Jesuit artist-in-residence at Boston College, pastor of St. Ignatius Church in Chestnut Hill, and artistic director of Boston Liturgical Dance Ensemble.