Zollar's choreography is striking in the way the body is maneuvered with wholeness and internal connectivity. It is as if all actions--moving, speaking, singing, crying, meditating, nurturing, falling--emerge from the entire body, not just from one body part, not just from the moving arms or the enunciating lips.

The polycentrism characteristic of Africanist dance styles is here realized uniquely in that energy issues from different sources--the voice, the torso, the pelvis--all of which irradiate the body with ase, the Yoruba word referring to "life-force," the creative power that imbues art and dance with "soul." In this context, the body is a vessel of spirituality, the site where it is experienced.

It is the body that quickens with spiritual intimations and is used as a spiritual medium--ideas that are common in African-American and Africanist religious traditions, especially in the phenomenon of possession. Still, Zollar makes the dancing body itself a prayer, though she seldom uses images of folded hands, bent heads, or other traditional depictions of praying. The spirit here, is in the body, but it manifests itself in unique ways: in other words, spirituality is differentiated from religiosity.