The Deep Intense Therapeutic Nature Of Dance

 

I love to dance.  I always have. Though I was not very good at it when I first started taking ballet in 4th grade - which only lasted a few weeks because I had no interest in the meticulous repetitive body conditioning and discipline it would take for me to have good form to leap like a gazelle across the room. I just wanted to leap across the room however I could – because I felt so enlivened when I tried.  Ballet class included none of that.  So I quit, early and never tried such a serious form again.

As a kid I was lanky, very gawky and awkward… ungraceful. I wanted to know how to dance well so I could have physical poise, and confidence in moving through space.  I was much more athletically strong than most or all of my peers, from grade school on into college. Initially this might have began  because we had a pull up bar across the entrance of our kitchen. Ahhh to be fair, it was a 2” x 4” beam that we put a half round dowel along on each top edge to make it easier on our hands - we used it nearly every time we passed through that entry. We all had visible definition to our shoulders and arms. And we all frequently won arm wrestling with others.

I gather my dad’s Irish heritage, and my mother’s Mexican roots were a good mix for all of us five kids being quite physically fit, strong and agile. Yet I was not graceful.

My brothers were quite muscly…. And I followed them on skate boards, climbing trees, swinging through the monkey bars… and wrestling.  

For many years, while I did pull-ups regularly, I could easily do fourteen one-handed pull ups: hold my legs straight out waist high while hanging there, and also easily raise my toes to the bar above my head… while folding at the waist and not bending my knees. And not simply with momentum, very, very slowly as if grooming to preform in Cirque du Soleil.

I got into gymnastics in 7th grade, after being a competitive swim team swimmer, doing water ballet, folk dancing, and hiking A lot, weekly. I ran track, and in 7th grade, I tied the county record for high jump with a scissor kick!!!!   I jumped over and easily cleared a 4’ 2” high jump bar at a time when I was 5’ 2 “ and 85 lbs; and landed on my feet in a crouch and simply stood up right on the 3’ 6” foam block pad on the other side of the bar.

We were not allowed to watch much if any TV… but I happened to see Soul Train and American Band Stand…at a friends house in the late 60’s early 70’s. And I wanted to have THOSE skills!

Around that time I learned a lot of yoga poses. I loved the feeling in my body from doing poses.  It felt like getting stress or junk out of my joints. It felt like waking up the wisdom and communication in my body between different areas that worked better when the synapses fired in an efficient succession.

I found incredibly fun dance classes at the local community colleges, and took Africa Haitian Dance, with Kim Hahn, And Broadway Jazz, and Modern Dance, and even performed at the Marin County Civic Center in the late 70's with David Jones' African Dance class students.

Sometimes I felt too tired and uninspired to go to class. At the time, it could seem unimportant enough to easily skip it here or there…yet I always went anyway, and I always had way more energy once there; it just fired me up. That is why I love to dance: I get more energy from doing it, than not doing it; or doing anything else.

During our performance, I was nervous and shy.  And I remember the moments before the curtain came up, having a sense that people in the audience might be embarrassed for me, seeing me up on stage, and I instantly knew I did not want to perform from that perspective. I flashed on what made watching a dancer performance enjoyable for me: it was when the dancers seemed to be enjoying themselves, even if they were off beat, or behind in the count or not sticking to the exact choreography. It was their joy that made it enjoyable for me to watch.

In the last minute as the curtain slowly rose. I took a huge breath, let out stress and decided to reveal just how much I ENJOY moving my body through space to music.

My then boyfriend was in the audience for our first show.  He sat in the middle seating just a few rows from the stage… I had explained in advance to that there would be a point when the dancer in front of me would suddenly go low, and I would spring up high in a side split. 

“Please take a photo of that moment.”  He did.  

He caught me at the beginning of my way down, yet still a great shot.  The only photo I have of me dancing.

I have had a video of my ice dancing… yet no photos of that either.

I loved going to bars to dance, even though I didn't even drink.  I found live music could get me particularly inspired and freed up in my hesitations to move in front of others.

In junior college I met another dancer, Cheryl and we danced together easily and well - no matter where we went. 

Sadly our dancing together so well, really discouraged men.  It seemed they might have preferred we sat motionless on the sidelines waiting for them to ask us to dance.  We did not even really like to dance with guys. They were painfully shy and a-rhythmic… and often far too drunk to be aware of what they were doing. They would stand so close it would seem they were attempting to stop our ability and freedom to dance at all. And many would come up to us while we were dancing and stand there motionless and ask,
 “Do you want to dance?” 

Which baffled me sooooo much. 

(Of course I want to DANCE! That is why I am already dancing!!!)

I never knew what to say. I mean couldn’t they just join us and dance with us?  Couldn’t they notice we were already dancing?!?!

While in college at UCSC in Santa Cruz, there was a lot of African Dance with live drummers. I could find and join an easy-to-get-to class nearly every day of the week. I even joined an African drum class taught be Arthur Hull. And could find percussionists at Lorenzo River bank park almost any day jamming there. If I had any ability to dance while I played a drum or Shekere – I would have also played in a band. But Dancing was way easier!!!

Once I moved back over the hill to Silicon Valley, I eventually discovered “Barefoot Boogies” and years later in 1999/2000, I landed in a wonderful immersive experience of 5 Rhythms, Dance Church, and that became my religion: my form of worship... a body mind connection within a group.  I took one main weekly class on Monday nights and other weekend workshops and a few other classes around SF Bay. 

In these classes, I showed up as I was… and let who I am inside out.  What precious discoveries.

I called my 5 Rhythms class, “Counseling for the body.”
 
Though I feel shy inside about a lot of things - even prudish about sexual connections with people…  when I began dancing, I was in no way shy.  I was insanely athletically fit and had a ton of wild free-form movement that flew out of me as soon as I was in a setting that felt like a safe container… that invited me to move and allowed my body to move as any body might want to with intense flamboyant reckless abandon.

And I did not hold back.

“Dance Ugly and Drool” was on shirts people wore to dance.

I designed shoes that were nearly like being barefoot, yet just enough leather and Lycra to hold it on, to protect my feet from blisters from too many spins or turns on the slick wood floor.

I brought any and everything I could ever want to release to that class and let it rip.  

In the peak of summer heat, it was not uncommon for about a dozen women to remove their sweaty shirts and let the girls bounce freely.

After a breakup, I had a wild session holding on to the ballet bar in Flex-It Gym when we danced there, and I set my head and upper body flailing through the air and screamed my head off wildly for about forty-five minutes. Man was that cathartic!!  Rage no longer scares me, I know what to do with it now.

The following week 4-5 other dancers did the same thing, at the same time and before long that ballet bar was yanked off the wall. And I felt responsible for starting that rage fest.

Here is a poem By Jewel Mathieson titled 
“We Have Come to be Danced”      That sums it up quite well.

"We have come to be danced.

Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance

The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance

The holding the precious moment in the palms.
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance.

But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance but the grave robber, tomb stalker.
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced.
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle.
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance .
The strip us from our casings, return our wings.
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into.
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced.
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I? Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance.
The olly olly oxen free free free dance.
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced .
Where the kingdom’s collide.
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray.
To root in skin sanctuary

We have come to be danced.
We have come."
     by Jewel Mathieson

Dance in a safe environment gave me the freedom to let me ass freely sway jiggle and gyrate without fearing it would lead to my being raped.

Dance let me find myself within - and let my embodied self show.

Dance let me synchronize with others… and helped me know myself better.  

Dance helped me discover all the ways I 'people-please' and accommodate others out of sync with me, by my adopting their rhythm, their speed, and their movements so we could feel in common.

Dance helped me see and know and feel all the reasons why I came to dance, to be seen, hugged, loved, and noticed… responded to… and also face how I feel when those anticipated attentions did not happen.

Dance helped me get sweaty and electrically alive in ways I had never ever been before unless I was having sex.

Dance helped me learn true cooperation with another human being.

Dance helped me honor my urges and inclinations to move or not; 
to be wild or mild and not move at all.

Dance helped me do exactly what I needed and wanted each class, and sometimes that was curling up on a sheepskin rug I brought… and soaking in the comfort when another curled their scalloped shape around me to rest connected for a while until one or the other was fulfilled.

Dance gave me life and willingness and freedom to be in ways that had not yet manifested in the rest of my life.

Dance gave me a container where all of me was welcome and accepted.

And each class we did exercises that helped us know ourselves deeper. 

Dance showed me nothing was better than moving to music and synchronizing with another human being.