dancing our way back to normal

“To understand the culture, study the dance.

To understand the dance, study the people.’

_Charles Davis

What we call “normal is often simply what we have become used to. In our modern world dance has been placed outside of ordinary life to be found for example in the theatre by specialised and trained performers. Clubs and special events are often reserved for small segments of society that comply with the right age and specialised groups. At celebrations such as weddings there’s always a divide between those that do not, and those that do dance.

This has not always been so, and is of course not universal. Among many indigenous cultures, such as the San people, trance dance is not entertainment but a collective way of restoring balance. When difficulties arise in the group, people gather, move, sing, and enter trance so that tension, conflict, and illness can be transformed together. Responsibility is shared and life is understood as a dance of relationships rather than a problem carried by one individual.

In this sense, conscious dance practices like Biodanza simply return us to something deeply human. When we move together with presence and music, the body remembers and well-being and renewal once again become a normal part of life. Perhaps the real question is not why we dance, but to wonder how we ever came to believe that dancing was unusual. The invitation is to normalise dance so that once again it becomes and integrated part of our lives.

_Christos Daskalakos