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An Outward and Visible Sign of an Inward and Spiritual Grace


 Drawing on Headlam’s sermons, pamphlets, and letters, this article explores his theology of the ballet, a theology made possible by his conception of sacrament and sacramental bodies. Headlam’s incarnational sacramentalism not only enabled a support of the stage as divinely created and a sacrosanct space, but created an approach to dancers, particularly women, that was distinct in its treatment of all bodies as the same in potentiality before God. His sacramentalism defied the standard conflation of dance with female transgression and male danger. Accordingly, Headlam’s vision of the earthly kingdom of God was one in which there was truly neither male nor female, and in which the stage and its ballerinas could act as models of the grace of Christ rather than as reflections of fallen humanity.