Heavenly Dance

March 27, 2021

Is Jesus currently a Chinese woman performing Irish stepdance?

Probably not. But Wikipedia reports that, according to the Church of Almighty God of China, Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is presently living as a Chinese woman.

That may sound far-fetched to you, but maybe not more surprising than it was to me as I recently watched members of that church on YouTube brilliantly copying the style and choreography of the Irish dance show Riverdance. I never thought I’d see Chinese people attempting, let alone succeeding at, that Irish art form. Until 1994 no one outside Ireland and the Irish diaspora knew anything about Irish dance, which until then had been tradition-bound with limited cross-cultural appeal.

And then Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and other Irish dance extravaganzas took the world by storm, becoming sensations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and big hits in China. Even so, it never occurred to me that the Chinese would want to actually do stepdance. I thought it would be too, well, Irish for them.

Stepdancing, when done professionally, is an exciting blend of precision, grace, elegance, athleticism, speed, drama, and thunderous percussion. The distinctive style emphasizes footwork, so the upper body is rigid and the arms are mostly kept at one’s sides. And I thought that the music – reels, jigs – might be too ethnic to appeal to anyone outside of St. Patrick’s Day. Besides, stepdance is a competitive sport among the Irish, and until Riverdance it had no international cachet.

But the Chinese have discovered what I learned years ago when I was in an amateur stepdance troupe: Irish hardshoe dance is very demanding but exhilarating to watch and to perform. Watch the three and a half minute video on YouTube: Riverdance Chinese style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZy78vA4SAg . The dancing is excellent, though they’re stepping to Chinese and not Irish music, so it’s not as authentic as it could be. I saw Riverdance live in Dublin a couple years ago, and it was superb. But the slick Chinese show is almost as good as the original. The Chinese dancers are so robotically perfect that they make the Irish Riverdancers look relaxed and sexy by comparison. But both approaches are wonderful to behold. To see six minutes of the original Riverdance, click on this YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPBn2kbBqV0 . And if you just can’t get enough of the original, here’s another four and a half minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfEkSW3K1tg

In researching the church and its cultural presentation for this essay, it’s not clear to me why these Chinese church members decided to put on an Irish dance show. Their three to four million-member church is banned in China because, as with the Falun Gong religious movement, the Communist Party considers it to be a dangerous cult. The church probably feels that the Communist Party is also a dangerous cult. In any case, their show is so professional and polished that they’re obviously not doing it just for fun; they’re trying to impress someone – but who? Is there a political or religious agenda to their dancing that is under the radar of the audience? One of the internet articles I read about the church, also known as Eastern Lightning, implied that the female incarnation of Christ is a member of their organization.

Check out the outstanding young stepdancers of the Church of the Almighty God of China. One of the women may be Jesus.