Nyabinghi Dreamtime celebrates a community's triumph over the negative forces that are gnawing at it. Interestingly, its structure is totally choreographed. Though it is based on substantial research of Rastafarian traditions, it is not an "ethnographic" piece, recording the alternative practices of a particular sect. Rather, it abstracts key ideas from the Rastafarian ideology of protest and alternative spirituality. The program notes, succinct but direct, make the point:

Nyabinghi is a ceremony of dancing, drumming, and singing [video clip] from the Rastafarian traditions that lasts from three to twenty-one days.

Rastafar is a way of life, a political movement based in protests and resistance. The Rastafari movement incorporates teachings from the Old Testament into their traditions.

Dreamtime is our place of visioning where the world is sung into existence and the different spiritual traditions of the African diaspora meet and merge.

Babylon is the force that has colonized and enslaved people for 400 years and still counting.

Zion is that place of remembrance of freedom and liberation that exists in our hearts and minds. The dream of its existence will never die.

In this envisioning, spirituality cannot be institutionalized; it cannot be part of an established church. Rather, it is a way of life where the political, the cultural, and the artistic coalesce into an embodiment of individual resistance. For Zollar, a politicized understanding of religion and an uncompromising search for unstructured expressions of spirituality lie at the center of belief. The spirit is realized through the artistic imagination--song and dance, melody and rhythm--which is woven from the stuff dreams are made of, dreams that enable us to cope with reality.