This essay analyses modern dance exercised by elderly participants that partake in the project Age on Stage. By looking at modern dance as a secular practice, exploring the experience of the self and existential meaning making it comparable to religious practice in Sweden. Drawing on theories of lived religion, embodied practice and religious reflexivity, the study explores the elderly participants experience and interpret dance as emotions, embodied experience and community. The empirical material is collected from qualitative interviews with six participants in the ages 65+. Following a qualitative content analysis examine how the participants described their experiences of modern dance practice and how their interpretation is perceived through a predominantly secular framework.

The analysis shows that, although the participants identify as either non-religious or post-religious, their description of dance is expressed as meaningful, emotionally transformative, socially and culturally grounding. By exploring experiences as flow, joy and cross-boarded experiences that exceeds beyond the individual self and are often framed extraordinary. Not in a supernatural sense, but a fundamentally qualitative different experience from everyday state of being, that the participants assert special meaning to. External factors such as leadership, spatial context, and group dynamics play a significant role in shaping these experiences. When all factors of the dance practice go in a symbiotic state, then the experiences can temporarily transcend everyday life and contribute to a deeper personal meaning and purpose.

Throughout the essay it argues that modern dance and (the arts) can be understood as a secular practice with religiously comparable functions. By offering insight into how embodied physical practice may operate as a form of lived religion in secular Sweden.