We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Randall Flinn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Randall below.

Alright, Randall thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

For over three decades, I have traveled with Ad Deum Dance Company on an international dance mission tour throughout Europe. We have served as performing artists, bringing our dance mission of redemptive hope and beauty to children in refugee camps, inmates in a Bulgarian maximum security prison, outreach performances for impoverished and at-risk neighborhoods, performances for Project Dance in Paris, France at Place de la Re’publique, after the 2015 terrorists attacks. Wherever we may go, our desire is to bring the healing balm of beauty where there have been the ashes of devastation to a people group or a geographic location. Ad Deum was also among the first artists to be invited to New York City to perform in Times Square just a few months after 911. This event was a gift of healing to a city still in deepest mourning. As Psalm 30;11 proclaims, we were sent to “turn their mourning into dancing and their sadness to joy.”

Randall, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Randall Flinn is the Founder/Artistic Director of Ad Deum Dance Company based in Houston, Texas. The company, now in their twenty fourth performance season, maintains an active touring schedule nationally and globally. The mission of the company is to artistically serve humanity at its deepest need for beauty, hope and compassion. Mr. Flinn has also served as a modern/contemporary dance educator on the faculty and guest teaching staff of Houston Ballet, Cirque Du Soleil, Hong Kong Ballet, Guangzhou Modern Dance Company in China,
City Contemporary Dance Company – Hong Kong, Houston’s Society For The Performing Arts, The American College Dance Festival, Adjunct Professor for Belhaven University, Friends University, University of Houston, Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, The Alvin Ailey Educational Outreach Program, The Project Dance Foundation, The University of The Nations, Creative Arts Europe, Palm Beach Atlantic University, and Houston’s High School For The Performing And Visual Arts.

Flinn’s choreographic credits span an extensive thirty-five-year array of creating work for professional dance companies and dance festivals worldwide. His choreography has been commissioned and performed for The International Dance Salad Festival, Dance Gallery Festival New York, Texas Weekend For Contemporary Dance, Bailando Dance Festival, Dance Houston, East Meets West, Artists For Hope, The C.S. Lewis Foundation Oxbridge Conference and C.S. Lewis Summer Institute in Belfast, N. Ireland, Project Dance Foundation in Paris, London, Sydney and NYC, The Ministry of Culture in Guadalajara,Mexico, Laois Dance Platform in Ireland, The French Consulate Of Houston and by invitation of the Princess of Malaysia.
Mr. Flinn began his early dance studies in his hometown of Houston, training in ballet, modern, jazz and tap at Houston Ballet Academy, Dance Arts Unlimited, Discovery Dance Group and later in New York at Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham School and studies with The Jose Limon Company. His modern classes emphasize the principles of Graham, Limon and Horton techniques. He is also a master Pilates Rehab Conditioning Specialist and served for twenty years as Core Conditioning and Joint Mobility Specialist at FIT Athletic Club in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Flinn believes that dance can inspire and transform people, communities and nations. It is with this mission and belief that he has traveled for many years as a visionary, pioneer, and ambassador of dance to many nations.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I wholeheartedly believe that the arts can inspire hope and serve as a signs and symbols of grace, of faith, and of love. I also believe that the arts can be sacramental in purpose. In other words, the arts can be visible or immanent signs of invisible and transcendent grace. Quite unashamedly, I have placed my trust in the Gospel – The Good News of Jesus Christ. My vision and mission as an artist is deeply intertwined with my faith in Christ and Christian worldview of all of life, That however does not mean that I only produce traditional religious, sacred, or liturgical works of art. As a Believer in the all encompassing creation brought forth by the word and Spirit of God as Creator, I look at the world through the lens of redemptive hope, recognizing that ever good and perfect gift come from the Heavenly Father, who also loves the world He created, For me, this truth is so majestically and gloriously liberating. The fuel of my freedom as an artist is nourished and enriched by my faith that sees the goodness of God offered to all people. Foe He is the God of beauty, As Fyodor Dostoevsky has said, “Beauty (who is Christ) will save the world.”

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Attempting to find release from the entangled webs of cynicism, pride, brokenness, bitterness, self protection, self sufficiency, and selfishness is no easy task. As the song says, “Breaking up is hard to do.” These wounded and scarred places in life eat away and steal from the generative, flourishing, creative, and loving lives that we are created to live. For way too many years of my life, I was enslaved by these very mortal corruptions of what it should be to be a person created in the image of God. I was imprisoning myself and drowning my very souls in the depths of delusion and the pathway to devastation. My true story and testimony is this: As the old hymn says, “Love lifted me!”
My friends, that Love has a name. For God so loved the world that he sent into this broken cosmos HIs only begotten Son. He came not to condemn the world but to save it. By grace we are saved though faith in Christ who took our iniquities upon himself.

He lifted me out of a proverbial pit and miry clay, and in the indescribable wonder of His love, He set my feet upon a rock and healed my heart. Now I can honestly dance, live, and have my being in a freedom, hope, and grace which I can’t even find the works to explain….but I can definitely show you through the sacramental language of interpretive dance…smile!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://addeumdance.org
• Instagram: addeumdanceco
• Facebook: ad deum dance company
• Youtube: Ad eum Dance Company

Image Credits

Photo Credits: httxartistphotog, Lynn Lane Photography, Frairefoto.dance.fitness, and Bailando Dance Festival