A Jesuit And The Fine Arts

After 28 years of dancing through the holidays, the Rev. Robert Ver Eecke , S.J. has finished his last production of "A Dancer's Christmas" at the Robsham Theater Arts Center, on the Boston College campus in Chestnut Hill. Ver Eecke, or Father Bob to anyone who knows him, choreographed the first manifestation of the show in 1981 and called it "A Concert of Dances for Advent and Christmas." But he loved dance long before that.

As a child growing up on Long Island in New York in the 1950s, Ver Eecke said, he had to keep his passion for dancing and movement more or less to himself, because "that just wasn't the kind of thing boys were supposed to be into."

VerEecke found an outlet for his passion when he entered the seminary at age 18. "I joined the Jesuits and was delightfully surprised," he said. "In the '60s, the Jesuits were rediscovering its tradition of the arts. In the 1600s and 1700s, Jesuits were crucial to the development of classical ballet, for as Ignatius of Loyola put it, God can be found in all things beautiful. Clearly dance reflects the glory of God."

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