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
There’s Time
Ending a workshop at the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation (SFDI), we sit in a large circle to share feedback. “I’m glad the three presenters are old,” one young participant says. “In your twenties you think you have to discover and understand everything immediately. But these folks are still dancing in their fifties and sixties. There’s plenty of time.”
Finding Your Feet
Teaching at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum with Dr. Wangari Maathai at Luther College in 2006, one learns to stand tall. A Nobel laureate from Kenya who planted over 30 million trees in Africa with women’s groups and her Green Belt Movement, Dr. Maathai helped rehabilitate the land and revise power structures. When we meet, I hear that she is third on a “hit list” to be assassinated in her homeland, yet she radiates positive energy and maintains a resonant voice. At lunch I ask, “How do you sustain energy for lecturing and travel amid threats?”
“I exercise every morning,” she says, “no matter where I am or what is happening—to balance the stress.” After her keynote address, she arrives at my movement workshop, lies down on the floor, and closes her eyes. With cut and cracked feet that know and trust the Earth, she is at home in her body.
WHY DANCE?
Fifteen statements from the first week of a choreography class
To learn about a place.
To communicate without words.
To have an open, honest chest.
To fall in love with the original ways the body can move.
To have the freedom to interpret dance in my own way.
To succeed through the body.
To give of myself.
To match swiftness with strength and to discipline both forces.
To feel humanity.
To find myself alive in my body.
To experience an essential lightness, joy, or relief.
To tap into a source of energy.
To gain confidence in my own movement.
To say, “Here I am, world.”
To feel a natural progression toward change and internal insight.
Tracing your feet
Illustration by Caryn McHose
TO DO
Finding Your Calcaneus (Caryn McHose)
15 minutes
Feet connect you to the Earth. Stability or instability in your base both reflects attitudes and affects whole-body coordination.
Seated, feel for your heel bone—your calcaneus.
• Trace its contours. It’s large—hold it in your hand.
• Notice that it travels from back to front in your body, ending in front of your ankle joint and extending behind.
• Use one hand to circle your calcaneus, and notice how the rest of your foot and toes are directed by the heel.
With a partner, Partner A seated on the floor, Partner B standing:
• Partner A, hold the right calcaneus of Partner B, rooting it to the floor.
•