Blog – About The Expressions of Dance

 

I love all the sharing of the many videos of dance and movement that are now out there in the vast world of the internet. As I watch them, what I see mostly are people expressing their own organic movement through their forms and expressions of dance. I find it lovely and interesting but somewhat two dimensional.

In curiosity and the process of exploration, I go over to their YouTube channels or the TikTok pages hoping for more. Only to see the repeating flows of that person’s body over and over again. Their movements are habitual and revealing of what that person is trying to work out through their body’s quality and style of movement. Often the person is caught in a loop of emotion and expression, seeking to find an answer to a question that seems caught in the body from the past traumas.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that bodies need and long for expression. The organic flows of a body are beautiful and wonderful. But what inspires me the most are those that have learned so many disciplines of movement and technique that they have a quality of strength and flexibility to move their body through motions that are not necessarily organic to that body, but they have chosen to embrace the hardships and repetition required to master new types of movement, so that they can express more depth and feeling through their bodies. I love those dancers that want to learn about emotions beyond their own experiences and manage to make them real by finding new ways to express them through new forms of dance and movement.

This is what makes dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov so impressive. Trained in a traditional Russian school for dance, he learned the discipline, skill, and stamina to work with the body and then throughout his life he attempted to find ways to move his body into new styles such a Twyla Tharp, Jerome Robbins, Balanchine, and many others. But because of his skill and tremendous self-discipline, he embraced many other ways of moving to become the legend that he is … even still, today.

All things in life require growth to become great.

Dance mimics life because they are both about learning to embrace the hardships of mental discipline, emotional self-control, and physical stamina.

I watch people all day do endless loops of their unresolved issues, completely unaware that they are doing it. Some do it through movement, others through words and/or actions. They wonder why things never change.
But it is because they are not changing.

Not really.

Yes, we can do release work and learn to move our bodies and allow the emotions to be expressed. Yet, the greater game is to let them go. The release of such things when freely resolved and embraced by the soul, becomes an explosion of self-awareness that changes that person forever.

When people watch me dance now, they comment that I don’t move like a ballerina. I take that as a compliment because while I loved everything about ballet, it was a particular phase of my life, and it gave me the foundation and strength to move on from there.

Since ballet, I became a yoga teacher, did Pilates, Tennis, belly dancing, and stripper pole dancing. Each of these types of movement demanded something very different from my soul and my core. They allowed me to express things that I did not know were there and embody something that was at times even a bit scary.

Belly dancing showed me how ungrounded I was and how out of touch I was with the dark goddess inside my soul. With belly dancing … the flows of energy is down into the pelvis, where in ballet the energy is up in the chest and exploding into the air becoming light.

Stripper pole dancing gave me permission to be seen as my sensual and sexual self. I got to let out parts of my human condition that I had long denied.

Yoga taught me how much of a control freak I was. The desire for perfection in ballet too easily translated over into yoga and it allowed me to see that I had way too much ability in this area and in fact, I needed to do something that I could not be perfect in.

That is why … I then went for tennis. Because tennis is like a chess match. It is a strategy and a game of finesse. It is not about looking perfect or graceful. It is about running like hell to get to a ball but then to be so calm inside that you could softly go under a ball and barely hit it in a way, so it dropped over the net.

Dance is a way to let go. It is a way to learn about yourself and where you are stuck in places and where you might be habitually dragging your body along for the ride. It is a path to self-awareness and insight. It is a way to discover emotions that you have suppressed and feared. It is a pathway to become whole if you are willing to let go and notice your own body motions that have become routine.

In general, I try to look at all repeating patterns that occur in my reality. Most people are so not in their body that they don’t move enough to know where they are locking their body into ways of standing or walking that do not serve how to find the fullest expression of energy through this body in this lifetime.

Words are also too often an endless litany and loop about a particular pattern that seems to be seeking some form of resolution and release. But do we notice when those words actually push others away? Do we notice how our words cause reactions in others?

The truth is that when we are in a body, that body holds memories. And those memories (while often wonderful) need to evolve with us in this life. We are here to embrace our fullness, not our limitations, or who we were in our past.

This is why I love body work, massage, acupuncture, and other systems that help us release tension in our body and allow us to become more aware.

This body is a tool to help us see what is inside that is trying to get out. This body needs us to be willing to fully let things go. This body is asking for us to expand into the unknown … not contract around the familiar.

There is so much more out there if we are willing to move into those things that challenge the body even if they bring various forms of discomfort.

What I find is that the mind and body love a challenge. They love change, and they want to be free.

To find the freedom, one has to be willing to let go.
To find the peace, one has to be willing to embrace conflict.
To find wholeness, one has to be willing to seek in the darkness to find what has been hidden.

~Suzanne Wagner~