By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
A class of dancers at Praise Academy happily prepare to rehearse on their school grounds.
TWO YEARS after dance teacher, Pat Noble got saved, she was on the stage of the Little Theatre dancing to Bob Marley's Redemption Song in a Jamaica School of Dance production.
She heard a voice which said: 'Who are you edifying when you are dancing like this?' She was devastated.
"When I came off, the other dancers said to me: 'Pat Noble, what happen to your face? How you look so?' So I told them that I heard this voice. And they said: 'Well, it is only the voice of God that could talk to you like that.'
"I went into a corner and I said, 'God, anything you want me to do, I will do. Just allow me to finish this concert'," Pat recalled.
The following day was a Monday. She found that when she awoke, she could not walk. She was virtually lame for a week. The following week life began to return to her feet. She related these developments to her church sister, the renowned Gene Denham (now deceased), staff worker at the Students Christian Fellowship and Scripture Union (SCFSU). Gene explained that because Pat had earlier been involved in dancing Kumina and Revivalist dances, she had attracted demonic spirits to her body. Gene then instructed her how to fast and pray and seek deliverance. This she did and was indeed delivered of the demons that had been oppressing her.
About a year later, Pat was alone at home, when she heard God say to her 'I am going to teach you to dance.' The Lord told her she was going to do 'Interpretive Worship' where words are used to inspire movement. She got up and played Andrae Crouch's O, It is Jesus in her cassette player and danced it without a hitch or without stopping under the choreography of the Holy Spirit, she explained.
Some time later, a member of a dance troupe she was working with at the Covenant Community Church in Kingston prophesied over her. Pat was at the time contemplating a Master's degree in Dance, having earned a diploma in dance education from the Jamaica School of Dance.
The prophetic word declared that she was not to go and do the Master's for what the Lord was going to teach her would be more than she would learn in formal study. The prophetic word also said that God was going to establish a dance academy and that she was going to lead it. Pat did not give serious regard to that prophesy as she felt she was too ordinary to establish a dance school. Seven years later, Pat quit her job as a primary school teacher to pioneer Praise Academy of Dance.
The Academy, which is inter-denominational, has grown to an enrolment of 245 students ranging from four year olds to adults - all served by nine teachers including Pat herself.
On January 17, Praise Academy of Dance celebrated 10 years and many testimonies of lives that have been favourably transformed because of the training and ministry in dance.
Since it came into being, the Academy has been able to take some of its students to 11 countries, including Australia and South Africa. The team is usually a hit at international Christian dance conferences where invariably they are called on to demonstrate or give seminars/workshops on Christian reggae dancing.
The Academy, which is located at 1A Devon Road in Kingston ( the same grounds as Liberty Prep), carefully screens student applications. Sweat pants and shorts form the preferred mode of dance attire in preference to leotards and tights.
One of the many prophetic words that came to Pat was that Praise Academy would be established in other lands. That word is close to fulfillment as she expects by year-end to establish a Praise Academy of Dance in Barbados. She is also working towards the establishment of a Christian Performing Arts School.
Pat is concerned with what she describes as a lot of unwholesome movements that characterises much of secular dance. To that extent, she hopes to create Christian reggae dance videos and get such on TV programmes and cable channels.
Praise Academy's work has not gone unnoticed. This year at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's dance contests, the school won six gold medals at the regional finals and five awards at the national finals. Its trophies included the Rex Nettleford Awards for best Studio Group.
Excellence is the passion at the Academy, Pat stressed. "Some churches knock us on choreographed dancing. They believe dancing should be spontaneous. Well, just as how they don't believe in the choreographed dancing, I say, why rehearse for the choir- God wants us to be skilled in this art form (dancing). God loves excellence," she said.
