Learning To Dance
I’m not much of a dancer, meaning I don’t dance a lot. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of an upcoming dance performance and am realizing a new level of myself that has always been there just under the surface.
I think most people can listen to a particular moving song and feel the emotions bubble up to the surface and to the dancers out there, the next motion would of course be the body moving with that music. I too feel this as well but don’t express this through my body very often.
I remember as a teenager awkwardly moving my body at school dances and never felt comfortable with moves unless someone choreographed the moves for me to do. Even then, I didn’t feel the moves within myself. I never danced at home, didn’t see my parents dance and really didn’t see free style dancing at all except for those awkward school dances where most everyone I saw looked just as awkward. I convinced myself that I was unable to dance.
Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t encourage freestyle dancing and many of us haven’t had the opportunity to see this kind of dancing from our childhood. Sure, there are many formal dance classes out there but from my limited experience, the moves are shown to you and learning to feel the music flow through you along with your own moves flowing from within you, just doesn’t happen.
I’m sure as children, we had this ability to hear music and move in uninhibited ways but for various reasons we lost that connection. That free flowing movement of childhood changed to the body feeling rigid and stiff.
Dancing is a more accepted activity for women than men but women still only think they can dance if they have taken some kind of training and the dancing looks a certain acceptable way.
I believe many of us have lost our connection with the movement of our body because of the feminine energy being suppressed in our culture. When I think about it, dancing is an expression of the feminine energy that is within us all. When I was growing up, if my brothers or male counterparts danced in certain ways, they would have been ridiculed and made to feel ashamed. As women, living in a world that is still dominated by male energy, we have suppressed those unacceptable feminine traits which would include free flowing, uninhibited body movements of dance.
I’ve been thinking about these ideas and have concluded at least for now, that we all have an innate ability to experience for our bodies to feel the connection to our spirit through music. We all can dance!
Many of us have created a barrier for dance but the ability to dance is definitely within us if we can just release those barriers. I think we need to remind ourselves that as long as we are allowing to feel the music, any motion of our body is considered a dance. There is no wrong way here and we need to Let go of the cultural box of what dance is supposed to look like and who can do it.
Sure, we can look at different dance moves within all the dances out there and stick them in our back pockets as tools to apply to any particular song but we still need to learn how to feel our bodies with that music. Just with anything that we want to be good at, we must spend the time practicing this blending of our bodies to song.
So, back to this performance that will be happening in less than a month. My good friend has choreographed the moves to our dance but by just being part of the process of how this is done, it has rekindled this layer of myself that needs to express through the body. This is such a short time for this particular dance but it has given me a jump start to begin practicing this at home so that I may learn to listen with my body instead of my mind. This has given me the opportunity to stop thinking about what move to do and let the undirected flowing motion and transformation of the feminine energy to once again rise and express!
We will become the leaders of your own bodies and empower ourselves to let go of the stiffness, relax and release the linear side of the mind to embrace our natural feminine flow and circular motions. This will allow ourselves to feel our spirit flow freely with the music and connect not only within ourselves but also feel the connection with our dance partners.
This dance is for you and only you!!
Exposing one more layer within myself for the dance of life!!