Now believers can test their dancing skills with a brand new Christian-themed dance mat, the latest development in the dance arcade craze that has swept the U.S. and the UK.

|PIC1|The mat, Dance Praise, was launched last week by Digital Praise Inc., a market leader in family-friendly entertainment software, and is innovative not only in offering top hits from Christian artists, but also because of additional new features including Exercise, Arcade and ShadowDance modes.

Dance Praise has an impressive 50-track playlist for budding dancers to choose from, including Audio Adrenaline, Out of Eden, Steven Curtis Chapman, tobyMac and ZOEgirl, with lyrics displayed on the screen that reinforce positive Christian messages to allow dancers and non-dancers alike to sing along as they let loose on the interactive dance pad.

“Dance Praise combines two of the most popular entertainment trends in America today – contemporary Christian music and dance arcades,” said Tom Bean, president and CEO of Digital Praise Inc.

“Kids will love the energetic dancing, and parents won’t have to worry about inappropriate content,” said Mr Bean. “The Christian messages in the songs reinforce the values of love, grace, goodness, forgiveness and redemption. Plus, the dance pad plugs right into the USB port of a windows or Macintosh computer so anyone in the family can start dancing right away.”

The Christian dance mat functions in the same was as other conventional dance mats with arrows appearing on the screen in time with music to correspond with the arrows on the dance mat to direct the dancer’s feet.

The special ShadowDance mode, which works best when two mats are combined, allows one dancer to choreograph steps in real time for the second dancer to duplicate.

Among the many titles in Dance Praise’s repertoire are tobyMac’s Extreme Days, Chapman’s Only Getting Started and WooHoo by the Newsboys.

Digital Praise is an independent developer and publisher of family-friendly and faith-based entertainment software with principled character-building themes and “just good clean fun”.