DANCE - More real than real?

“Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self.”

_Gao Xingjian

How often do we hear artists being referred to as dreamers? Sadly to many people, the arts are seen as superfluous, as a nice to have, or maybe as just belonging to others. This hasn’t always been so. From our earliest beginnings, people crawled into the darkest of caves to create rock paintings. The oldest musical instrument is a 60,000-year-old flute. Rock shelter paintings in India, depict dance painted 10,000-years-ago. One would have imagined all these ancient ancestors to have had more important things to occupy their minds – like hunting for food and making sure they themselves are not eaten as food. And yet, there is something in the human spirit that leads us to engage in expressing ourselves through various artistic means.

Our modern-day predicament arises out of the fact that we have separated art out and defined it as distinct activity. It wasn’t always so. Art, music, dance were intrinsically part of life. They represented the balance between rational and creative minds, between conscious and altered states, between knowing and dreaming.

More and more, our body is being defined and accepted as the seat of the subconscious – the realm that is also recognised as being the driving force behind our behaviours, emotions and the way we experience life. To enrich our experience we would do well to delve into this dreamworld, to explore and uncover the deepest of our psyche. This is not a path that can be traveled by our conscious mind or rational thought. This is the path most familiar to the arts. Dance being an exceptionally powerful one as it involves every part of our being, physical, emotional and creative self.

Dance opens up the way to access our authentic self, residing below the surface composed of our chattering mind, stories we tell about ourselves, and beliefs about the world. When we dance and let go of any direction and control, we are able to let go into the realm of the subconscious, to explore and retrieve the origins of life. These are moments of great insight, healing and learning. Each person has their own journey to dance – but ultimately is also part of the great cosmic dance – life itself.

The question then is answered. Is the life around us all there is? Are we not constantly finding ways to limit our experiences to what we think is useful in the moment? Could dance not lift the veil on a reality that not only compels us to survival, but a reality more real than real, that invites us to dream and become co-creators of our own experience?

_Christos Daskalakos