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/
