Now forget it all and release your spirit into the dance!
DAY 2
Grupo Corpo
Benguelê
Photograph © José Luiz Pederneiras
Attitudes
What We Bring with Us
I can’t believe how long we go without dancing; I mean days, minutes, hours….
—Janet Adler, interview
People have complex views about the dancing body: it is respected and ignored, craved and forbidden, celebrated and scorned. Historically, dance has been feared and banned by both governments and religions. It challenges convention, threatening the status quo.1 Who knows what will happen when the body speaks? In the media, dancing is harnessed to sexuality, co-opted by commercialism, and dressed up by fashion. Is that why we are so afraid of dancing?
Body schema is one term neuroscientists use for overlapping maps in the brain that make a person aware of what his or her body is doing. Body schema is fed by sensory nerves throughout the body that tell us about our selves in relation to the world. Body image, in contrast, describes the constructed representation developed through life stories and attitudes accumulated from birth. Body schema and body image may not match—what your body actually feels and looks like and how you imagine you look may be worlds apart. This is what science writers Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee describe as “dueling body maps.”2
But perception is a construct, and attitudes change. It can be useful to take a look at familiar views and values, and discern how those ideas were formed. Patterns that you established at age twelve, eighteen, or even last week may no longer be appropriate for who you are now. Conditioned habits in coordination can result in overcontraction of muscles (think tight hips). Mental seeds about the dancing body manifest in action. We choose what to plant and what to nourish. This requires uncoupling biography and biology—personal story and genetically endowed structure. Receiving sensory signals, updating interpretation, and allowing communicative expression changes us. The ways we construct meaning are impacted: our view of the world and what we think is real.
We rebuild perception daily, moment by moment. Because dance is both a visual and a kinesthetic art form, dancers learn to see-feel movement. Hence the relevance of eyes-closed and skin-focused somatic work to feed and enhance the sensory maps, along with “outside eyes” offered by teachers, mirrors, cameras, and—eventually—audiences to corroborate sensation. The opportunity to perform various roles requiring new connections—beyond typecasting—enhances neurological plasticity. Working with diverse teachers, choreographers, and dancers keeps the body image responsive, refreshing sometimes-compromised sensory maps.
Pre-movement is the readiness state in the body at any moment, and it determines outcome of actions.3 Attitudes toward ease or distress continually create the conditions in which movement unfolds. At the instinctual level, survival is everything. Conditioned pathways in the body fire before conscious movements occur based on past experience. What is threatening or stressful to one person—performing, for example—may create safety or delight in another. In this way, our attitudes continuously orchestrate our actions.
Dancing is for life. It’s potent at every stage, and different at every age. As you deepen and grow through life experience, the edge of investigation shifts. This freshness of challenge supports lifelong involvement with no preknown sequence. There is a part of the self that remains ageless and a part that reflects growing maturity in relation to the vastness of the art form. Age is only one factor. Deep experience at any age—traumatic or joyful—rearranges how life unfolds.
Dancing and art making are natural doorways to self-discovery. For those who love their bodies, the passion and drive of movement might come without resistance. Yet, dancing requires wholeness—growing all parts of the self. If we stay purely at the physical level, over time the body gets hard and dull. Opening to unknown realms deepens and enlivens creative work. And for those who have a difficult relationship with body—emotional or physical challenges, overload or lack of weight, or a stubbornly intuitive or intellectual nature that would rather not be bothered with focusing on body—dance, if allowed, will unfold new dimensions.
What happens to our body attitudes as we consider ourselves dancers? Filtering daily life through an intelligent, informed physicality takes us beyond the ego, fame, or commercialism of dancing. In this way, everything we read or do has relevance to living a creative life: the clothes that move with our bodies, the light on our skin, and the words on this page. We may be doctors, therapists, parents, pastry chefs, organic farmers, teachers, or CEOS of thriving companies, but our embodied dancer-selves are alive and well—even if we never put a foot onstage. Life, in essence, is our ground.
STORIES
Do You Dance?
When I travel, I ask people about dance. Taxi drivers are particularly insightful. In Seattle, one asks where I am going. To South Korea, I respond, to give a lecture and dance. “I’m a dancer too,” he says, “from the former Soviet Union. I’ll show you some moves.” At the airport, he sets my bag on the curb and begins a short routine, with fancy footwork, quick turns, and polyrhythmic arm movements. Noting my delighted look, he adds, “You’ll do fine. You’re a professional.”
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In the cloud forest in Mindo, Ecuador, our young bird guide Javier says, “All men dance in Ecuador. If you don’t know how to lead, you’ll never get a girlfriend.” Our Galápagos guide, Washington, hosts a top-deck dance party for our small group of academics. Trying to inspire our salsa flow, he partners us one by one. Downstairs the boatmen are dancing. When the music stops, they are tying ropes and cooking dinner—living dancing.
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The passport inspector in London asks, “What’s your profession?” Dancers often get a suspicious look, so I try “Professor of dance.”
“That’s fantastic,” he responds. “I do ballroom. If we all danced, the world might be a better place.”
Looking Upward
After a week of “bonding with gravity” in a workshop on perception with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen at Earthdance, she takes us outside. “Now, bond with heaven,” she instructs. Energy rises up, from the roots of the soil toward the sky. At first it feels too light and joyous. Then it’s inspiring. Levity partners gravity.
TRACING YOUR FEET
With colored markers or chalk and a sheet of blank paper large enough for your feet:
• Trace around the outside of each foot.
• Fill in the drawing, taking time to color any sensations, images, ideas, injuries, memories, and associations.
What’s Important?
An aikido sensei declares that a fight is over before you begin. It’s the preset tone in the body that determines what happens. Coordination is set by your attitudes; the actual movements are too late.4
