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Psychologists search for why we dance. For me the question is similiar to why we worship or why we hope or why we love. Here are three takes on the topic.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/dance-research.aspx
Time is the vanishing point in meditation and in dance. At some point time has to disappear and become secondary. Busyness of mind or body is neither meditation nor dance. So at some point, stillness is called for. Music, the great communicator, uses stillness even complete silence, to its maximum effect. In music it is called a “rest.” The length of time does not matter as long as our attention goes somewhere else. In the music “rest”, we taste the excitement of the last phrase and anticipate the next one.
Meditation is the training to meld the deliciousness of the last moment into the present moment and into the anticipation of the next moment. Dance is this same training when it goes beyond the busyness of moving and explores the “rest” as an integral part of a movement sequence.
The Ballet Barre and the Modern Dance floor warmup are the premier meditations combining centuries of knowledge from temple dances, martial arts, and yoga.
Organs and cells have intelligence and affect our personalities.http://tinyurl.com/smartcells If cells have memories and memories shape us, then dance is a powerful learning tool.
Dance trains every cell in the body and calls on all parts of the brain to coordinate that training. Why is dance so complete? Take the muscles, dance trains large and small muscle groups, gross and subtle movements, connects muscle and nerve activity coordinating every part of the body, coordinates parallel and circular motion.
That is only the beginning because the training goes deep into the brain and the cellular intelligence to program rhythm and phrasing, emotion and empathy, anticipation and planning not just for a task but for communicating a complete artistic symboling of a personality or a theme.
Bring in the training of the breath and controlling states of mind to build dance as a complete trainer of smart cells. Organs respond as dancers learn to focus and control their stress levels and build an awareness that coordinates mind control, breath. muscle function, emotion, and communication. This highly trained awareness leads to the greatest skill of all, the ability to explore down to the cellular level.
The ballet warmup “barre” stuns me especially when I watch professionals begin their work day. The internal focus is worthy of any meditation and the personal silence is as rich as any prayer. Within their silence and careful attention to the slowest movement is a flood of internal conversation and information download. Each dancer is measuring their day’s unique energy level, body tone, and reaching within for the incentive to reach new heights in the day’s performance.
The complete body enters every movement, creating a new palette for the day. Yesterdays injuries and disappointments must be washed clean in these silent moments of concentration. The arms and legs gather energy from deep within the torso and pass across and around the body in ancient rituals that free the brain to heal the body and focus the mind.
I imagine the origins of these movements were codified in the earliest temple dances.
Just got off the couch today from watching CNN and Clean House where I was hoping to rest from doing taxes. Then I pulled up enough courage to cha cha.
Well of course. Dance moves the energy and cleans the system. My thoughts clear out and my clogged body begins again with more fun oxygen coming straight from my smile.
Never mind the salt lights and gadgets that get rid of negative ions. Dance does it all. All I needed was one minute of fun getting into basic cha cha.
That must be why even the earliest peoples finished out their day with a round of community singing and dancing.
When does dance come from silence, when we know that we must to each moment bring ourselves completely and most times that calls for complete exuberance, a complete commitment that we speak as boldness or brashness in order to make a full statement of ourselves, in order to bring us alongside the others who we hold most times above ourselves.
Yes there are moments when we hold ourselves in a silence so powerful that we speak ourselves without even knowing who we are. The simple walk in Modern Dance holds the power of our earth plates sliding, riding the molten air, and catching a new forming earth beneath our heel or our toe. The moment of anticipation before every Ballet movement, the simple rising and falling practiced since childhood, has the power to create an inhale among thousands of people. In Contact Improvisation, two bodies touch at a one quarter inch juncture and the silence clanks with the completeness of a final puzzle piece finding its place. Then the silence rolls like a waterfall finally finding the edge of its own cliff.
We dance these moments so clearly, so succinctly, so courageously that we do not even recognize ourselves. Yet, we are most times very adept at erasing the memory of these moments so that we do not have to listen to the silence that bleeds like ink over the lines we like to draw in our minds.
Yes, these are the moments in our dance that bring our voice from deep inside flushing our skin alive with the rich color of our blood. Yet, most times we are unable or unwilling to roll with the silence as it takes us to water’s edge. We even seek in our dance to shed the shame of our unique color palette ignoring that everyone’s blood is part of the same hurricane.
So as fast as we seek to hide from our silence, our dance uncovers the sand over us. Sometimes we eagerly climb up the sliding sand, laughing at our vulnerability. Most times we wince at the brightness of the desert sun that reveals our rich palette, that exposes us to criticism, and that challenges us to enter the sand hills with gusto.
Two notes of music and the dance floor is flooded with people alive, eager, ready, breathing, and bright. Why is that?
What is this body anyway? A bubbling of energy that knows everything about itself. I know this bubbling when I am in the dancing space, what @Deborah Hay calls the Dancing Breath. The bubbling is always sensing, always messaging, always sending electricity and chemicals to take care of the tweeks that are called for by my cells. When I am dancing either in space or in meditation, it is the brightness and lightness of this bubbling that keeps me going.
My journey to an open heart has taken me through many religions as well as many dance forms. Dance is similar to religious prayer and practice in many ways. They share:
1. a focus both inside and outside
2. a facing of the bumpy waters of the soul as my hidden blocks stored away in my body come to the surface
3. a discipline of staying aware and saying “yes” to the next steps
4. a prerequisite for kindness to myself so that I can go past fears and old patterns
5. a willingness to commit myself totally believing I can fulfill my most intimate aspirations
6. an openness of heart to receive help, strength, and courage
7. a willingness to untangle and release harmful habits and thoughts even when I think they are essential to my survival
8. a determination not to give up even when it seems the answer or the shift will never come
9. a determination to have patience with and to face down the doubts that plague any explorer
10. Saying a huge “yes” to the delight and the joy of the explorers life
Dance and religion share a focus of exploring the open heart so we can experience a full commitment to life with gratitude and joy. Dance is often an essential part of prayer, meditation, concentration, contemplation, and other religious rituals. Some examples are, aboriginal dances asking for help with rain or fertility, monks singing while walking a labyrinth, yoga, Sufi circle dances, some Christian groups that include dancing as a part of their worship, and some spirituality groups such as Sweat Your Prayers and Trance Dance put dance as a central part of their rituals.
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