In God's Presence: Conquering Addiction through Dance

127 Pages·2015·0.8 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Delancy

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2007
In God's Presence: Conquering Addiction
Through Dance
Elizabeth Delancy
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

IN GOD’S PRESENCE: CONQUERING ADDICTION THROUGH DANCE

By

ELIZABETH DELANCY

A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities
In partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2007

Copyright 2007
Elizabeth Delancy
All Rights reserved
The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Elizabeth Delancy defended
on the 16th of October, 2007.

John O. Perpener, III
Professor Directing Dissertation

Neil Jumonville
Outside Committee Member

William Cloonan
Committee Member
Humanities Representative

Nancy Smith Fichter
Committee Member

Tricia Henry Young
Committee Member

Approved:

________________________________________________
David Johnson
Head, Program in the Humanities

________________________________________________
Joseph Travis
Dean, College of Arts and Science

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee
members.
ii
To Mom and Dad….
Thank you for your love and support.
I love you.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I give a special thanks to Alexia L. Jones, and the women of Beracha, who showed me
that dance is a triple-corded rope of faith, hope and survival upon which we hold. With
gratitude, I acknowledge my committee: Dr. John O. Perpener (director), Dr. William
Cloonan, Dr. Neil Jumonville, Dr. Nancy Smith Fichter, and Dr. Tricia Henry Young. I
admire each of you greatly and thank you for your unique contributions to this
dissertation. Thank you also to Dr. David Johnson, Chair of the Department of
Interdisciplinary Humanities for your support. Undying thanks I give to my mentor, Dr.
Beverly Barber, for continually motivating and encouraging me during this process. You
are heaven-sent. Thank you, Dr. Juanita Williams for sharing your time, expertise, and
wisdom. Special thanks to my family—nuclear and adopted—for your prayers and
support. Mom, Dad, Bridgid, Dineé, Chip and Michelle, Lisa, Jo, Aurora, Erin, Janie,
Louberta and Willa Jo, I love you all!
And above all… thank you, Abba (God) for blessing and keeping me!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract vi

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE: LAYING THE FOUNDATION 11

CHAPTER TWO: DRUG USE AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN FEMALE 30

CHAPTER THREE: A PATH TO WHOLENESS 63

CONCLUSION 94

BIBLIOGRAPHY 106

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 119
v
ABSTRACT

Alexia L. Jones was in her early stages of recovery from an addiction to powder
cocaine when she discovered the healing power of Christian-based dance. In 1995 Jones,
a former professional dancer began using dance as a personal, physical expression of
worship. During her private, daily process of prayer and praise and worship of God
through dance, Jones learned that her dancing encouraged her sobriety. Her continued
abstinence from drugs was a by product of her dancing which fostered spiritual,
physiological and psychological healing. She credited dance, undergirded by her faith in
God, as the tool that sustained her. The Beracha Dance Institute was born out of her
revelatory experiences concerning the healing power of worshipful dance. Jones’ simple
act of allowing other women to participate in her process of worship led to the
inadvertent development of a therapeutic dance application that proved beneficial to
women in recovery.
The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical examination of founder/
director Alexia Jones’ use of Christian-based dance as a treatment for substance addiction
through the Beracha Dance Institute. This study analyzes how Jones’ integrative process
intuitively drew on the similar techniques and methodologies of clinical dance therapy
and those of faith-based dance ministries. Jones’ work combined the transformative and
restorative properties of both of these applications of dance. In addition, Jones’ work—
and the sources it drew on—echo the healing dance rituals that have been used in
traditional societies throughout the ages. Consequently, an historical analysis of her work
necessitates looking at the foundations of—and the analogies between—the clinically
therapeutic application of dance and the spiritually therapeutic application of dance, as
well as their historical precedents.
vi
INTRODUCTION

This study is an historical examination of founder/director Alexia Jones’ use of
Christian-based dance as a treatment for substance addiction. Through the Beracha
Dance Institute of Mothers in Crisis, Jones intuitively developed and used an approach to
Christian dance therapy that reflected characteristics of traditional cultural healing dance,
Christian sacred dance, and clinical dance therapy. Her program was largely successful
in helping drug-dependent women achieve and maintain sobriety by ultimately shifting
their reliance on drugs to a dependence on God. This study will examine these
achievements. Additionally, this investigation will bring to light areas that weakened
Jones’ method and limited her impact in the field of dance therapy as a treatment for drug
addiction. The three areas of weakness were Jones’ minimal employment of dance
technique, her reluctance to establish Beracha Dance Institute as an independent
organization, and her inattention to documenting and publishing her work. In the
conclusion of this study, I will discuss how these deficiencies affected Jones’ program
and suggest how improving these aspects of her program could have bolstered her efforts.
Alexia L. Jones, dancer and ordained minister of dance1, committed herself,
through the Beracha Dance Institute of Mothers in Crisis, of Tallahassee, Florida, to
helping women break the “vicious cycle of addiction” of which she had intimate
knowledge. Jones grew up in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. She had studied
modern dance, ballet, and traditional African dance forms since the age of seven. Her
dance teachers and the choreographers with whom Jones worked found her to be a
precocious and sensitive youth; hence she was often cast in principal dance roles for the
numerous concerts in which she performed throughout the Atlanta area. It was also in
her native Georgia that she developed a fondness for marijuana at the age of 13. For
Jones, drug usage was not the result of the need for mere amusement; rather it served as a

1 In most Protestant Christian churches, God’s call on the individual’s life to ministry must be recognized
by both the aspirant and the church. Following a period of discernment during which the individual seeks
clarity concerning his or her call, the church authorizes the individual to take on the office of ministry.
Jones was called to use dance to interpret and share the Gospel, and serve God, the congregates and the
community.
1
temporary escape from her problems. Initially, she was attempting to cope with a
verbally abusive father. She found that the chemically induced euphoria softened the
blow of excruciatingly harsh and rampant criticism. As she neared time for high school
graduation in 1981, she longed to attend and study dance at Spelman College in Atlanta,
Georgia. She then hoped to apply her dance training and education towards grassroots
efforts in whichever African-American community she found herself after graduating.
However, at her mother’s insistence, Jones applied for Florida State University’s
Department of Dance, which ranked among the top three university dance programs in
the United States.
Jones was accepted into the Florida State University’s Department of Dance in
1981. Already frustrated at the prospect of devoting time to theoretical and practical
dance pursuits in an environment not of her choosing, Jones’ marijuana use became both
a comfort-inducing and rebellious act. Her feelings concerning Florida State University
were further exacerbated by racially charged incidents that occurred in the dance
department. Such racial antagonism was a part of the university’s cultural landscape and
was largely fueled by the national political climate:
In 1968, Richard Nixon used what had become known as his “Southern
Strategy”—a plan to draw support from the more traditionally Democratic south
by promising not to promote sweeping social changes in race relations…. The
success of that strategy not only brought Nixon to the White House twice, but also
placed Ronald Reagan there for two terms in the 1980s. Reagan’s 1980 campaign
speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi stirred controversy when he told the crowd of
his support for “states’ rights.” The phrase was long used as a code for resistance
to black advances, sure to be well-received by Southern voters. (Suarez 2002)
[unpaginated webpage]

Some professors and students were slow to adjust to the changing tide. African-
American students were sometimes met with vehement resistance in the form of verbal
affronts. In an interview, Jones recalled being called a “nigger” by a male student in her
ballet class. Finding no satisfactory remedy to the affront, she found succor through her
addiction.
While at Florida State, she met and became friends with Rosalind Tompkins, a
social work major, who also used marijuana with frequency. Tompkins, who became
severely addicted to crack cocaine, would later establish Mothers in Crisis, Inc., in 1991.
2
Mothers in Crisis was established in Tallahassee, Florida as a support organization for
substance addicted women. In the 1980s, Jones and Tompkins, drug buddies and best
friends, regularly engaged in dubious behavior. It was not long before Jones’ reliance on
the illicit substance affected her ability to fulfill her scholastic obligations (Alexia Jones,
pers.comm). She was so involved in the drug culture at the university that she eventually
flunked out of school and returned home to Georgia, in 1986, where her drug use
continued to escalate and she began to favor powder cocaine.
[C]hemical dependency can be viewed as a misguided attempt at self-healing.
The difficulty for the addict is that substances provide false solutions. The basic
disturbances remain and the user is propelled into the vicious cycle of addiction.
Whatever the initial forces that bring a person to use drugs, once addiction
takes hold its grip is relentless. (Rose 1995, 102)

The intensification of Jones’ drug use is typical. The Eastern Economic Journal
conducted a study to determine whether marijuana is a gateway drug, one that leads to the
use of other illicit drugs. The research provided evidence that “past marijuana use
increases the probability of current cocaine use by twenty-nine percentage points”
(DiSimone 1998) [unpaginated webpage]. In 2002, a study challenged the gateway
argument for the purposes of reclassifying marijuana as a legal controlled substance.
However, Will Glaspy, a special agent and spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Agency explained, “Whether you want to use the gateway argument for the reason why
marijuana is illegal or any other argument, the fact is, the majority of cocaine and heroin
users first used marijuana before moving on to other drugs. And once you’ve taken that
first step, it’s easier to take the second step” (Kirchheimer 2004) [unpaginated webpage].
As a functioning addict, Jones was able to work with several professional dance
companies. However, whether touring nationally or dancing in lead roles for the Atlanta-
based Jomandi Productions, her addiction dominated her daily existence. In an interview,
Jones recalled her last professional performance. The show was Bessie Sings the Blues.
She had asked the playwright/director to write her into the play. Having known Jones for
over a period of seven years, he not only agreed, but also gave her a featured dancing
role. The elation of starring in this well-attended production was still no match for a
chemically induced high. Prior to the show, she snorted a significant amount of cocaine,
smoked two marijuana cigarettes, and drank two beers. In the midst of performing the
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