Dance is Essential to a Culture of Humanity

I took my first dance class in 1982, at the age of 2. I never stopped and now I’m 40. Dance is the primary way I learned what it is to be human and to make beauty out of dynamic self alignment. I now have the honor of teaching dance. I’m discovering that dance is essential to a culture of humanity.

I consider myself a love maker, someone who creates love out of what is not yet love. I’m called to create a culture of humanity, welcoming and generosity that replaces a culture of oppression, division, and abandonment. Dance is teaching me how it is an essential part of creating a culture of humanity.

The past 3 hours I was in a dance making ritual with some dear friends and colleagues. Some of them commented on how “truthful,” my movement is. I paused. It felt good to receive this reflection and it encouraged me to write this blog post. What makes a dance truthful?

Truthful movement comes from the quality of attention we focus on what is true. My toe is touching the white strings of my rug. This breath is slightly smaller than the last one. My eyes just blinked. The right side of my neck is more open than the left side. This quality of attention is where truthful movement emerges from.

I’m an organizer for Touch&Play, an international dance festival exploring the relational body.

One of our guest teachers at a recent T&P festival was Betty Martin, a Sacred Intimate, Certified Sexological Bodyworker, and international pioneer. She is best known for her development of The Art of Receiving and Giving: the Wheel of Consent. She sat watching me improvise with a few other dancers. I looked over to invite her to join us with my eyes. She gently declined. After the dance she said to me, “I don’t think I can keep up with the pace. Not the pace of the dance, the pace of the attention you all have.” I was surprised and intrigued by this distinction.

A truthful dance moves at the pace of the attention of the dancers. This includes the attention we have of our own somatic experiences and sensations. It also includes the attention we have for our imagination! By this I mean the imagery, spiritual transmission, or “mythopoetry” as my teacher, Zhenevere Sophia Dao says.

Stephanie Rudloe took this photo of me on Chebeague Island (MI.) We were with Dunya McPherson, my Sufi Dancemeditation teacher visiting the home of her wonderful parents.

My spine is arching. That is a physical sensation.

My heart is rising toward the sunlight as I open to the warmth of my life. That is the mythopoetry that provides another dimension.

My breasts start to widen opening space for my warm heart. The sheer white tunic slides ever so slightly over my soft skin. I lean back to rest in the wind as it runs it’s fingers through my hair. My own fingers rise and delicately find their way to simple notes on a flute. The wind licks its lips and blows softly through the pipe of the flute.

In addition to this depth of attention inward, there might also be external stimulus to attune with. There might be music, or other dancers, or choreography, or the energy of a responsive audience. Each of these is an opportunity for attention and attunement.

One of the things that’s most fulfilling in my life is improvising with a live drummer in response to other dancers, with a live audience. As I write this post I have a new understanding for this fulfillment. It’s the harmony I become while attuning to my dynamic internal and external world. My dance becomes the space in which my internal agency is responsive and co-creating with the energy of what and who is around me. It happens mostly when my brain is relaxing. There’s a wisdom in my organism and my intuition that knows how to harmonize. I live for for this harmony, it is the root of our new culture.