Dance as an Evolutionary Path

How dancing can help us evolve off the dance floor

I've been reflecting lately on my journey with dance since I started dancing as an authentic movement practice around 2002. I didn't see it as I was going through it, but there were evolutionary phases that I went through, and I watched others, and even whole dance communities, go through these phases too. I have been a dancer, a dance leader, taught the art of dance playlists, started new communities, and played around with contact improv. And I continue to be impressed by how my evolution as a dancer has informed my evolution as a human being, particularly in my relationships.

When I first started dancing, the were two immediate challenges:

1. To attune deeply to my body and how it was moved by music and,

2. To surrender to the animal knowing of my body and let it take control of my movements.

This seems so simple, but can be challenging to practice. We have to surrender our sense of control and allow ourselves to “be danced” by something outside of the ego. Our culture has a “mind over matter” approach that wants the mind to be in control and is somewhat dismissive of the emotions and the somatic wisdom of the body. This is emblematic of the command and control, left brained paradigm we've been conditioned into as modern humans. So surrendering to our somatic intelligence goes against the grain of our conditioning, and overcoming it can take many years. I call this phase 1A, and it's the foundational practice upon which the next phase is based. I can’t count the number of times I have found myself outside my body either thinking “I must look foolish”, or sometimes thinking “I must look really cool”. Either way, it’s a dissociated state, not an embodied state, and the practice is to step back into direct experience of the body.

The second half of the first phase (phase 1B), is where we apply this ability to surrender to the body and it's emotions not just for the happy, celebratory emotions, but for all emotions. Some people seem to go directly to this phase, perhaps stimulated by the need to release the more painful and intense emotions. But most people seem to start with joyful or celebratory emotions.

It's easier, or may just less challenging to social mores, to dance the upbeat happy emotions. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's a good place to start, but there is a huge therapeutic effect when we can dance all of our so called “negative” emotions too. Happy emotions never get stuck in my body, but emotions like sadness, grief, and anger have a tendency to get stuck as “issues in the tissues”. I find when I can express these emotions through dance, they unlock and dissipate. A good dance may be more effective than therapy in some cases. I often feel cleansed internally after dancing.

Moving into Phase 1B where we can express every emotion requires having a safe space to express those emotions. A place where we won't be judged, and also where no one will try to fix us. If I am feeling sad and dancing that sadness, it is not a pathology that needs to be fixed. The community needs to be in a place in their own evolution where they can hold space for people to process emotions in their own way. I've seen people crying on the dance floor many times; sometimes it's felt okay to go over to them in solidarity, showing them companionship and “yeah, me too”. But never with that “don't be sad” energy. The usual reason people don't want you to be sad is because they are disconnected from their own sadness, and your sadness may trigger their sadness. A community at this stage of evolution has the awareness to hold space for all emotions.

The first phase of dance evolution is about connecting deeply with your self. The second phase of dance evolution begins when we start interacting with other dancers on the dance floor. Here we need to maintain the connection to self that we developed in the first phase while we listen and open to the energy of one of our fellow beings. It's easy to get this wrong by either staying too focused on self (i.e. not listening), or getting lost in the other person, losing your self, and letting boundaries be crossed. That's why we need to take our time in phase one, to build that solid connection to our self before trying to interact with others.

In the second phase, dance becomes a metaphor for intimate relationship. The same self/other issues comes up when we have a long term partner, as described eloquently by psychologist Esther Perel:

“… the number one task of every relationship, or romantic relationships, is how do I get close to you without losing me? And how to I hold on to me, without losing you? Now you know, I said to you in the beginning, that we grow up, and we have both needs, togetherness and separateness. And then we come out of our childhoods, and some of us need more space, freedom, separateness. And some of us need more protection, connection, togetherness. Of course we tend to meet somebody whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities. And so you find that in many relationships, you have one person who is more afraid of losing the other, and one person who is more afraid of losing themselves. One person more afraid with a fear of abandonment, and one person more afraid with a fear of suffocation.”

In the second phase, there is also a dynamic interplay between leading and following. If both people try to lead, there will be conflict and disharmony. If both people only follow, there is no energy to initiate and nothing will happen. What I have often experienced is that when two people connect with the intention to show up with what they want and feel, as well as deep listening, the leading and following trades back and forth in a beautiful interplay of energy. Often it's not even possible for me to know who is leading and who is following.

A third dynamic I see arising in the second phase is the cultural idea that initiating a dance with someone is a “move” in our mating rituals. We have a tendency to interpret someone initiating a dance as an expression of sexual or romantic interest. The community has to get past this for the community to enter solidly into the second phase. Let's consider what will happen if we maintain this interpretation of dancing with someone. If someone initiates a dance with a person, and that person is not romantically interested, then they will likely say no. If that person is interested romantically, and the one initiating is just dancing for the joy of dance, that could lead to some disappointment later. So these mating ritual interpretations restrict our partner choice unnecessarily, and can lead to feelings of disappointment. It's better if the whole community develops an awareness that wanting to dance with someone does not equate to wanting to date someone. Of course, romantic feelings do happen on the dance floor, we are all still human after all, and dance is an evocative experience. We should just not assume that romantic feelings are there. I was leading a dance a few months back, and talked about not mapping wanting a dance to attraction in the opening circle before the dance started; this led to one of the most open and interactive dances that I have ever had with newer dancers.

On the dance floor, we get to explore these dynamics in an environment that's lower risk than our intimate relationship. The connection with our dance partner is at risk, but we can have many dance partners. So we get to practice, and we will get it wrong sometimes, and hopefully, learn from it. It can help us see our connection patterns. How you do something (dance) is how you do everything (including relationships). It is also happening over a very short period of time, so the speed with which you can gain this experience is greatly accelerated.

The evolution of dance happens within a community, not equally in each person, but as a wave affecting many at the same time. The container is important, and it's not just held by the leader or organizer of a dance. In the best communities, everyone is holding space for everyone's evolution. Experienced dancers that are mostly working in the second phase should hold space for people who are in the first phase, and that mostly means just leaving them to themselves and trusting the evolutionary path is doing it’s work. An experienced dancer can help those who are ready to begin exploring the second phase by gently offering some interactions.

Where ever you are on your dance journey, it's important to embrace where you are and fully explore it with curiosity. It's not a race. Trying to speed up the evolution may slow you down. Surrender to the journey.