What even IS dance?
If dance is an answer, then I'll be a dancer
Sometimes I'm in the mood to search for the one thing I'm about.
Like the answer to the riddle of life could be one word.
This week, I thought many times, The answer is Dance.
Tho that posed another riddle, What even IS Dance?
One thing Dance is, for me:
a helpful habit of thought.
In my everyday relationships, especially working with clients, if I’m stuck,
sometimes I have a moment of grace
when I think, "What if this were a dance?"
And the thought interrupts or melts the unnecessary strain that comes out of fear or anxiety.
This miraculous dance-thought dispels an inaccurate feeling
that I’m solely responsible for how things are going with others.
As though the other person were inert.
The thought of dance helps me remember:
the other is also connected to the ground, doing their own dance.
It helps to think in terms of movement and whole person-ness.
They are a person in gravity.
I am a person in gravity.
We are dancing.
Dance is not about fixing.
Dance is about dancing.
In March, I wrote something speculative on Facebook,
like, “maybe my work with kids is actually Dance.”
There were some external signs pointing that direction.
I was newly moved into an office in a wonderful new dance school, Colorado Movement Lab.
I have a dance background.
I dance on Sundays at the Boulder Contact Lab.
Feldenkrais described what he did as dance (sometimes).
So yeah, maybe my work with kids is dance.
Little did I know a mom would read that and think, “Damn, that actually sounds perfect for my kid.”
She let me know,
“I read that post on facebook.
I think that sounds really cool.
Can we set up a dance lesson for my kid?”
I was surprised.
I thought, “Really?
I was just sharing some inner thoughts.”
But she was actually interested, and all of a sudden the idea seemed more valuable to me.
Maybe this idea could be real.
Now, three months later we’ve actually done two dance lessons.
Me and this 13 year old girl and this adventurous mom.
We work in a studio.
Big open floor.
We jump around.
We take breaks lying on the floor.
We dance, but
Not learning steps or techniques to repeat.
Not dance for performance.
We dance improvised relationship.
What even IS dance?
Years ago, my grandma bought me a book for my birthday which I still haven’t read.
But I thought it might have something useful for this post.
From the introduction
Ancient Europeans … sought to influence the flow of life by means of dance.
Among rural farmers, struggling to lay in enough plant and animal food to make it through another year, the encouragement of life—the process of germinating or hatching, then growing and bearing issue—was essential to survival. The reasoning … is roughly as follows.
Life causes motion, and motion can give evidence of life. This becomes “Life causes motion, hence motion is evidence of life.” Humans can see that the motions of work have a direct purpose, but motion for motion’s sake is something else— “dance” broadly taken.
In the languages of eastern Europe, the same word often means both “dance” and “play,” and other nondirected motions like swinging, tickling, and laughing may fall in this basket. Medieval Europeans, too, called the nocturnal dancing and feasting of the spirits the game, its goal being an abundance of crops called luck). Supernatural powers, of course, need not work to survive; hence divine life simply “dances” and in this very act of dancing is thought to create life.
Wow.
Or a dream-like dance definition:
Maybe dance is the pot of gold at the end of developmental movement rainbow.
The developmental movements, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, standing up… etc.
But then at some point you realize, Wait.
All these ways I learned to get where I wanted to go, could now be dance?
And so many of the years nothing feels like dance.
Life is a slog.
But then a storm comes to ruin your life, and there’s a rainbow on the far horizon.
The pot of gold.
When you try to get there from here, the horizon keeps moving out into the distance.
The bus driver drives the bus off the cliff.
Falling through space.
And it turns out the pot of gold you’re falling into has no bottom.
It’s actually a portal into a dance dimension, where the dancing goddesses show you past life traumas that explain why you do the coping-things you do.
Or maybe Dance is simply the infinite game of dogs playing at the dog park.
Bowing.
Feinting.
Dominating.
Submitting.
Panting.
Drinking water.
Let’s do it again.
Sometimes I'm in the mood to search for the one thing.
Like the answer to the riddle of life could be one word.
This week, I thought many times and in different ways, The answer is Dance.
I’m writing this so I can come back later.
Maybe on a different day,
When I think and feel differently,
I’ll dance the dance-word dance
in a different way.