Dance - The Joy of Living

“Find ecstasy in life: the mere sense of living is joy enough.”

_Emily Dickinson

The Yoruba philosophy Aṣẹ is interesting as it introduces the idea that life is not a passive universal energy but rather an active life-force within which we have the capacity to participate, create and express ourselves. This brings a different perspective to the Biodanza Biocentric Principle that puts LIFE at the centre which proposes that we exist because life exists and not the other way around. And the very name BIODANZA reinforces this idea inviting us to dance with life in a way that has meaning and intensity.

We dance not to connect to life, we dance because we ARE life. This brings a beautiful dynamic to our dances where we are not simply expressing ourselves through movement but engaging with life in an active and creative process. Through the dance we have an opportunity to uncover those qualities in us that have remained dormant or forgotten. The Vivencia becomes a space in which we are actively engaged in a creative unfolding through our dances.

When we look at life and dance as a dynamic pas de deux we realise the wonder and magic of being part of something that is greater than ourselves and yet something we can engage with. We are not rudderless drifting along the currents of life. Our dances become a kind of magical handbook that allows us to be at the helm. We participate actively in shaping our lives within the larger unfolding of life itself. Each dance becomes a revelation and in that revelation we discover joy. The joy of living.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dancing Life’s Resonance

“We rarely hear the inward music, 

but we’re all dancing to it never less.”

_Rumi

Sound brings the world into being. Life becomes audible and, to borrow Caspar Henderson's term, auraculous: we encounter the marvelousness of creation and of one another through sound. There is a Shona story that the mbira was created to imitate the sound of falling raindrops; further south, among the Xhosa and Zulu, a traditional account tells of a hunter discovering the musical possibilities of his hunting bow when its twang resonated against an empty calabash. The calabash itself evokes the imagery of a womb or chest cavity, a hollow space echoing human emotion.

In Biodanza sound and music is something we experience with our whole being when we are moved to dance. Instead of a passive listening to, we have an active engagement when the music not only activates our physical body through motricity, but awakens our emotional body by evoking every aspect of the kaleidoscope that is the human experience. We don't simply hear the music; we feel it, respond to it and allow it to find expression through us.

At some point, Rolando Toro invites us to become the music, transcending the resonance of the earth and entering a cosmic resonance that reflects life itself. Our dances become ever-unfolding manifestations of this living movement. Just as music cannot be understood from a static perspective, neither can dance or life. Instead of holding on and resisting the flow we surrender to the dance and then touch something sacred, becoming creators of our own lives and entering into the marvellous.

_Christos Daskalakos

Sankofa

“The past is not the dance.”

When we dance we cannot dwell on the past. Instead of connecting with the past with nostalgia, regret or guilt, the Akan of Ghana offer us “ Sanfoka”, a philosophy that invites us to “go back and get it.” The past becomes a place of learning. We connect to learn and grow.

In dance every movement grows out of the movement that came before it. This continuity does not always represent repetition. The movement I am in now comes from, and is made possible from the movement that came before. Biodanza invites us to embody this flow especially through the expression of Creativity. We do not dance another’s choreography, nor are the movements repetitive. Instead of remaining with familiar or traditional patterns, we are invited into the space of creating new possibilities.

This does not mean we forget or disqualify the past. The African wisdom of “Sanfoka” invites us to honour the past but not be bound by it. As we dance from one “past” movement to another we experience it not as a choreography we have to follow but something which is continuously emerging. We embody and experience life not as a story already written to which we are eternally bound, but as something that continuous to unfold through us.

_Christos Daskalakos

Whole in Every Dance

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”

_Maya Angelou

The magic of the Biodanza group is that we co-create our Vivencia (experience) together. Dancing alone can be wonderful and fun, but something else happens when we share our dances in a group. We create a shared field of inspiration, support and affective connection. The group is not merely a collection of individuals but an environment in which our dances and experiences are amplified.

Biodanza is the existential expression of our humanity. Our unique identities are created through our genes and find individual expression through our own narratives. Although these are important, Biodanza invites us to also transcend these individual identities. The group provides a space in which we discover and embody our individuality while at the same time experiencing ourselves as part of something greater.

Dance is both a metaphor and also a direct embodied experience of the whole. This ancient practice finds its origins in our shared biology and movement. Physically and socially we share the capacity for connection. Through dancing together we discover this and at the same time connect with the magic and wonder of expressing this in our unique ways. Our dances and the dances of others become the mirror in which life is reflected back at us.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dancing with our Endogenous Mood

“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”

_Roy T Bennett

Dance can change the way we perceive and experience life. In Biodanza, the Vital Unconscious represents the intelligence of the living body. One of the ways this deep intelligence manifests is through what Rolando Toro calls our endogenous mood. This is more than just feeling any particular emotion but rather is something more basic. It is something ever present, deep, autonomous, and unconscious. Despite fleeting emotions that may come and go our endogenous mood is continuously the way in which our living body is orientating us towards the world.

Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has explored this underlying dimension of experience, which psychologists call affect. Affect is present throughout our lives, whether or not we are experiencing a recognisable emotion and whether or not we are consciously aware of it. It influences how we perceive the world. Studies in her lab show that what we see, hear and feel is not simply received by the senses, but is shaped by the state of our body. Our endogenous mood therefore becomes part of the lens through which life is experienced.

This is one of the many reasons dance can be so transformative. If the deepest sources of our mood are largely unconscious, we cannot simply think our way into changing them. Dance offers another pathway through the body. In Biodanza, carefully selected music, poetic invitations, and natural movement create positive ecofactors that awaken joy, play, vitality and pleasure. These life affirming experiences can influence this underlying state. We are not trying to control the body or manufacture any particular emotion. Instead we create the conditions in which movement can arise from within. The vivencia, experience, is the incubator in which life is nurtured and affirmed through dance.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dancing the Moment that Moves

“Life is like a river, it keeps on flowing, ever-changing.”

_Buddha

Dance offers us different ways of organising our experience. We are so used to the way we live that we never question how this impacts our understanding and meaning of life. For example, we experience time as linear, and life as a sequence of self-contained events. In this paradigm, the past becomes the events that have happened, the present is what is happening, and the future what will happen. Instead, what if we encounter the ancient Greek god, Kairos and start seeing life as continuous process of becoming?

The gurus advise us to live in the present, which is often mistaken for a point between past and future. Instead, what if we saw it more as transition through which the past becomes something new? Dance offers us a way to experience this liberation from the shackles of time! Each of our movements creates the conditions and possibilities from which the next movement can emerge. We don’t find meaning contained in any one movement waiting to be interpreted. Instead meaning comes from continuous movement where what came before gives this moment meaning, and at the same time what comes after may transform what the moment meant.

Life is experienced as dynamic, ever changing, in constant transformation. We can free ourselves from the debilitating emotions of guilt, regret, knowing that in the flow there is never a finished moment, a “present”, but continuous experience. Dance is a lived demonstration of this. A movement is never entirely finished, because it changes our position, our sensation, and exposes the possibilities available for what can come next. The freedom that comes from improvisation in dance comes from the freedom to stop holding onto any one movement but to immerse ourselves in the movement itself. In Biodanza this is the Vivencia of emergence and becoming. We don’t stay fixated on our identity or life as it is, but surrender completely to the dance that is the flow of life itself.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dances of Plenitude

“He who cannot dance will say, the drum is bad.”

_Ashanti Proverb

Often we approach personal development and other life challenges as if we need to acquire something from outside of us to change. Biodanza flips this around and proposes that everything we ever need is already inside of us and that our dances become a way of recognition rather than acquisition. A powerful example of this is recognising our own power through the Dance of the Tiger.

The Vivencia creates a space in which we move beyond our habitual ways of being and encounter different possibilities in us. This includes stories of lack or judgements that prompt us to seek to change ourselves from the outside in. Creative dances open up the space in which we connect with new possibilities including the way we perceive ourselves.

Each Vivencia offers us an opportunity to experience and embody many more dimensions of ourselves. Dances of vitality can connect us with our own inner strength. Our capacity to give and receive love can become evident through dances of affective interaction with another and the group. In Biodanza our dances become more than just physical movement. Through embodying feeling they become the avenues through which our ever emerging identities expand beyond any limitations. The more we explore and expand our dances, the more emergent we become so that we stop seeing ourselves as a finished object but rather as a fluid, dynamic, and ever changing stream of life itself.

_Christos Daskalakos