Wicked has once again captured the cultural spotlight and woven itself into the fabric of our collective consciousness. It’s the subject of late-night shows and SNL skits while our social media feeds are filled with its viral choreography. But in this December moment, if Advent were a Wicked song, it wouldn’t be “Dancing Through Life” or “Popular.” Advent isn’t a polished performance with perfectly synchronized steps; it’s more like an unscripted, raw, and sometimes awkward dance. If Advent were a Wicked song, it would be the duet at the Ozdust Ballroom.
I’m not tying the church’s current liturgical moment with the box office’s current hit simply because they line up on our calendars. There is a new scene in Wicked’s film adaptation that can help us see the significance of waiting seasons as we follow Jesus. First, however, some background on Wicked.
Wicked reimagines the story of The Wizard of Oz, focusing on the complex friendship between Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl, and Glinda, the bubbly “Good Witch.” Set in the magical land of Oz, the musical touches on themes of power, identity, and societal expectations, and has produced unforgettable hits like “Defying Gravity,” “Dancing Through Life,” and “Popular.”
Originally a book and then a Broadway production, Wicked is now—to the joy of musical lovers—a movie. I assume movie adaptations carry the pressure and weight of expectations, but director Jon M. Chu seems to have risen to (defied gravity for?) the occasion. Relying on practical sets rather than CGI, he leans into movement and song to tell a deeper story.
Ethan Slater, who plays Boq in the movie, recalls a speech Chu gave to the hundred dancers on the set of “Dancing Through Life,” one of the movie’s largest musical numbers. Slater shared that Chu emphasized his love of telling stories through dance, and that he wanted the performers to tell their own stories through movement. Slater remembers Chu’s line: “I’m not here to chop up your movements and tell my story. I’m here to help you tell your story through dance, and we’re all in it together.” According to Slater, Chu maintained this energy and attitude throughout the entire filming process.
Chu emphasizes that musicals shine when the music feels like a natural extension of emotion. He describes his goal as making the transition from dialogue to song so seamless that the audience doesn’t realize they’ve entered a musical moment. Reflecting on “Defying Gravity,” he said, “You’re suddenly in a song you don’t even know you’re in yet,” emphasizing the improvisational and raw beauty in music’s ability to express deeper truths.
Unlike the precision of a Broadway number, Advent feels more like improvisation.
What better time is there to reflect on deeper truths than Advent? This is the season where we enter into Christ’s story of redemption; it’s heavy with holiday cheer and big emotions even as the church calendar calls us to wait. At its core, Advent is about tension, about living in the “already but not yet” of God’s story. Advent means “arrival,” and yet, we’re asked to wait. We declare that God has done what he said he would do, and we ask him to do what he said he will do.
Unlike the precision of a Broadway number, Advent feels more like improvisation. It’s awkward and raw. We find ourselves in the middle of something we don’t fully understand yet we wait with anticipation for what is to come. This waiting isn’t passive, though. It’s a vulnerable engagement with both God and time itself. Advent is not a season of resolution but one of living within the unresolved—much like the bittersweet ache of Wicked’s duet.
In the film adaptation of Wicked, the Ozdust Ballroom scene brings a new dimension to the story. Chu describes how the film’s scene differs from the stage version: “All of it had a bigger purpose in our movie. It’s this giant pivot when things start to get really real here for their relationships, and space and geography sometimes help express those things.” The way Chu frames this scene reflects Advent’s own invitation to pause and engage with something deeper, more raw, and more honest.
As the scene begins, the tension between Elphaba and Glinda is palpable. Earlier in the evening, Glinda had embarrassed Elphaba by giving her a ridiculous hat meant to shame her at the dance. But when Elphaba steps onto the dance floor, surrounded by silence and a gaping audience, she sets down her hat and dances not to fit in, but to vulnerably, shakily, express herself. Her movements are raw and unrefined, in stark contrast to the polished routines prior. Elphaba then puts the hat back on. This moment of vulnerability shifts something in Glinda, who silently responds and joins Elphaba. Their rivalry set aside, we now witness a moment of connection. They go through the movements together as a call and response, the dance catches on, and we realize we have witnessed a change in the story and the characters.
Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda, recalls how one and a half days were spent filming this particular scene, describing it as “utter pin-drop silence, and every single person in the room was absolutely just right there with Cynthia and kind of holding a very warm space for how much she was giving the whole time.” Grande intentionally didn’t learn the choreography in order to ensure that the moment where Glinda joins Elphaba was as authentic as possible: “I felt like the more awkward it looks on Glinda, the more beautiful it can be. We’re both just, like, little wild deer greeting each other and trying to figure out how to speak the same language. It’s so beautifully awkward, and I love it very much.”
Cynthia Erivo, who plays Elphaba, shares how the Ozdust scene’s original choreography didn’t align with how she saw her character. In Wicked’s stage rendition, Elphaba’s movements were meant to be funny. But telling the story through film afforded the ability to focus on pauses and subtleties to reveal a more intimate side of the character. The choreography evolved so the movements almost narrated Elphaba’s interior journey. Each time it was filmed, she performed the dance from start to finish, crying at the end of each take as she sought to embody the emotion of the moment. As Erivo describes it, “All of (Elphaba’s) vulnerabilities kind of needed to be on the outside—it’s what she leads with.”
Throughout the film, Chu was patient during these vulnerable moments between Elphaba and Glinda. “You can’t rush that,” he said. “Every beat felt necessary.” Despite being an emotionally exhausting day, Erivo still described it as “the most special moment to have experienced. It really does feel like magic.”
The vulnerability in the scene, its awkward movements, the way the camera pauses on the unsaid moments—on hesitation, on longing—all mirror our Advent journey. Just as the dancers in the scene do not hurry toward a climax, Advent calls us to not live ahead of time but to wait without rushing toward resolution.
This waiting, though necessary, doesn’t always feel intuitive. James K.A. Smith suggests that Christian life isn’t about skipping to the final verse; it’s about learning to live in the song, feeling the rhythm and moving with the dance: “A faithful Christian life is a matter of keeping time with the Spirit… ‘What do we do now?’ is one of the fundamental questions of discipleship.”
It takes a sort of risky discernment to know what season, what sort of time, we are living in. Smith describes how the church’s worship calendar can help with this as “calibration technology for the soul,” which shapes us over time and guides our response to God’s unfolding story. The church, through the cadence of the liturgical calendar, guides us in this dance, helping us attune our hearts to the deeper movements of God at work. Advent draws us into these rhythms of waiting. It’s not a passive pause but an active inhabiting of time—one where we, like the Ozdust dancers, learn how to “wait” with anticipation and grace.
In Advent, we, too, are invited into something uncertain and unfinished. We aren’t handed a neatly choreographed number but instead, asked to participate in a story still unfolding. Advent doesn’t demand perfection—it demands presence. Just as Elphaba and Glinda’s duet doesn’t seek flawless execution but rather, emotional connection, Advent invites us to connect with God in the raw, unfinished spaces of our world and our lives.
The Ozdust scene makes space for the emotional complexities of the moment. The choreography slows down and the camera lingers on what’s unspoken between Elphaba and Glinda: the former’s tentative reach for connection, the latter’s hesitation. It’s in these quiet, uncertain moments where the scene’s emotional weight is felt. This is Advent: living in the tension, in the pause, in the waiting. We’re handed a song in a minor key and invited to respond.
