dancing IN SYNC

“Dance and music find their way into secret places of the soul.”

_Plato

The beauty of dancing in a group is that as we move to the same rhythms, we start to create a collective energy that is often felt by everyone. Rhythmic patterns and movements create a shared sense of time and flow, bringing everyone into alignment with each other through the music. This shared experience allows individuals to connect deeply with a sense of unity and synchrony with others. This lies at the core of many studies that show that dance stimulates pro-social behaviour in communities.

The feeling of synchronicity can be incredibly powerful providing the dancers with a sense of connection and belonging that can be difficult to replicate in other contexts. This is experiential, embodied and lived in the moment, not rationalised or elaborated in mental ways. Dance transcends language barriers and by extension cultural differences. The joy and pleasure we experience when we dance with each other opens the way for feeling connected.

Not only does dance provide us this experience of being in sync with others but the magic and expansion we feel in the dance opens up the feelings and experience of being connected to the world. Through the dance we can truly say we are in sync, be it the people around us or to life itself in a big way.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance is a CELEBRATION OF LIFE

“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”

– Rumi.

Dance is a celebration of life.

It allows us to express ourselves in ways that words cannot. Movement is a constant reminder that we are alive, that not only do we experience the world as it is, but we can also be inspired to create it the way we would like to see it. Dance brings people together, regardless. Whichever way we move, dance finds a way to unite us in joy.

Beyond words and language, dance has the power to inspire and uplift us. It reminds us that life can be experienced as full of joy, beauty, and magic. When we break free from our own limitations, be they the challenges of life, or the self-limiting stories we tell ourselves, we find that we can connect with the essence of who we are.

This experience is to be found in the present moment, exactly where we find dance. Here and now we are reminded to live fully, express ourselves freely and simply celebrate the beauty of existence. So whether we dance on our own, or with others, let us embrace this power of dance to inspire, uplift and celebrate the miracle of life.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance LIGHTNESS

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements

will never do any harm to the world.”

_Voltaire

Dance can bring both lightness and joy to our lives. In short, it is a harmless activity that can bring happiness and fulfilment. So why is it so difficult for many people?

It would seem that some of these reasons are also exactly some of the benefits and powers of dance. Firstly, people may feel self-conscious about their dancing abilities or even what they may look like when dancing. They may also feel uncomfortable about their bodies or how they move. Yet, once we let go into the dance and release our inner creative and expressive self, not only do we gain self-confidence, but also a positive self-image, and self-esteem.

Secondly, there is sheer fear! Sometimes people are fearful of expressing themselves. To let go into the dance can be a space of vulnerability. In a society that is quick to assess, judge, and sometimes dismiss our efforts, this is a very real experience. It takes great courage to step out of this fear and through the doorway that leads to dance. But once we do that what awaits us is pure magic.

Each one of us is unique so that which keeps us from dancing and fully expressing ourselves may be different. However, once we move past these barriers and enter the dance we find that whatever it was that we were carrying slowly melts away. Maybe not all at once, but certainly each time we dance, we let go a little more. Until one day we feel in our body an incredible lightness. We dance without effort. We dance without fear. We dance with joy as our authentic being is given this incredible opportunity to express itself fully in the world.

_Christos Daskalakos

which is MY dance?

 “Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum,

every movement on state, in words, is virtually impossible.”

_Michael Barishnikov

This marvelous body of ours is like a cosmic antenna. Through the exquisite composition of our external and internal senses, we receive the information that allows us to construct our reality. We do this nanosecond to nanosecond, and so it appears to us that the world is a solid, permanent, and something of an object with which we can engage. And yet in truth, it is ephemeral. The time span along which changes take place may be a bit longer than we can easily perceive. The changing seasons are not detectable in a minute or hour, but we wake up one day and the trees are more orange than green, and we feel the passing of the summer.

In contrast, the ephemeral nature of dance is experienced in real-time. There are no freeze frames in the dance. We cannot linger to savour, stop to contemplate, or indulge in an emotional freeze. We keep dancing even if we do return to revisit and experience that which has given us joy or pleasure. Ultimately the dance flows and even if it seems like we are repeating or cycling back, in reality, we are creating new and layered experiences of the things that are familiar to us. Words cannot capture the nanosecond, to nanosecond experience of the dance, and by extension, life.

Like the dance, life is lived, not explained. Sadly when people are caught up in the explanation, they repeat and hold onto stories that are really relics from our past. What is happening NOW? Which is my dance in this nanosecond of eternity? Our mind can only draw a blank with these questions. The answer lies enveloped in music and dance. The answer is really that there is no separate dance that is our particular dance. There is only one dance, one life, and to suck out every drop of the mystery of this cosmic experience, we need to keep moving. To dance life here, now, fully.

_Christos Daskalakos

dancing outside THE BOX

“Dance is an art in space and time.

The object of the dancer is to obliterate that.”

_Merc Cunningham

What are the limits of your personal space?

What are the limits of your dancing space?

Are they the same?

The Kinesphere is a spatial dimension within which we dance. The term was coined by the Hungarian choreographer and dance theorist Rudolf von Laban, and is an imaginary dynamic sphere that surrounds a moving dancer and changes its shape and size as the body moves. Although Laban’s Kinesphere has twenty points, that is it is an icosahedron, many people limit their dance to a two-dimensional flat plane. The Kinesphere not only describes an imaginary dimension in space, it can also be used as a metaphor for life and describe the self-imposed limitation and boundaries we create around ourselves and each other.

This life Kinesphere is shaped by many factors. These are cultural, those imposed by society, and those we create through our own life experiences. This imaginary space represents our limits both physically and metaphorically. It becomes the manner in which we engage with the world in movements, gestures, and interactions determined by unconscious habits. Our movement and body, however, do reflect our endogenous moods, and state of mind. This is most obvious in the dance. To what extent do we engage, extend, contract, express, hide, leap, or contain?

Creative dance gives us the space to extend the range of our personal Kinesphere. The emotional component of music can support the exploration of new movements and dimensions. Mind and body are connected, and when we begin to dance outside of our personal kinespheric box, we open up a different and richer experience to life. The dance becomes a laboratory of life. We can experiment, explore, and experience within the safety of a contained environment. And when we have embodied the new we can venture out into the world and call truly call ourselves “dancers of life.”

_Christos Daskalakos

These feet were made for DANCING!

 

“You were born to dance to the beat of your own heart.

To roam without cages, with the innocence of a child

and the free spirit of untamed horses.

I hope you laugh without stopping

live with abandon and love like that's all there is.

Stay wild, my wild, wild, child.”

_Kenny Chesney

We were born to dance, and that means, everyone can dance. 

 As life emerges, we see that babies respond to the beat of the music naturally which studies have shown they find engaging and pleasant.  In fact, humans generally have an innate predisposition to music and dance, and both are present in all cultures across time.  Movement plays an integral part in human development that continues throughout our whole life.  Movement, the form of dancing is a human universal and involves whole-body movements that make it a powerful modality for learning and development. 

A natural part of childhood is spontaneity and free expression.  Often this is physical, like jumping up and down with excitement.  It follows that dance comes naturally to children.  This ability to express through movement and dance is the basis of therapeutic dance modalities.  In Biodanza we intentionally create the environment for participants to connect to this spontaneous and innate capacity.  We use dance as a means of stimulating the genetic expressions of life in five ways - vitality, sensuality, creativity, affectivity, and transcendence.  Each of these expressions relates back to basic human instincts and drives that have been part of our evolutionary development as humans.  In a healthy environment, they are expressed fully and in an integrated way that facilitates our personal journeys of individuation.

That we stop dancing is tragic.  The path back to dance is filled with smiles of joy.  It is difficult to hold a grudge against someone with whom you are dancing.  And so, beyond our own personal development dance has a powerful role to play in bringing harmony to humanity.  Looking back, we see the baby connecting to rhythm and finding joy.  We scale that up to a group, and studies have shown that people who synchronise and dance together are disposed to pro-social behaviour.  Our human connection is opened up and through the dance, we can reach toward each other.  In a way we can say that dance not only plays an essential role in our human development but that this role is sacred as it opens the heart by transcending everything that divides us – be it ego, be it culture, be it grouchy mood!

We were born to dance because it is so powerful!

_Christos Daskalakos

VITALITY dance

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost.”

_Martha Graham – a pioneer of Modern Dance

Somewhere between the vital, energetic, and flexible bodies of childhood and now, things change. As we grow set in our ways, the body loses its flexibility as it follows predetermined patterns of behaviour. But even sadder are the bodies that become frozen in time. Frozen as defence mechanisms against emotional overload. Or frozen as disconnected machines due to trauma. This is noticeable in various movement or lack of movement patterns. Inflexible spines, dissociated limbs or even bodies that move zombie-like around the world, with hardly a twitch as if, to move means to be exposed, vulnerable and open to life.

The more we protect and shield ourselves from the world, the less we move. However, the stiffness and hardness of the armoured body means that it not only keeps out all threat and danger, but it also disconnects us from life. Rigidity blocks the vital energy and force that is our expression of life. Vitality ebbs away and the body becomes frozen.

Movement is the key. And even more powerful is movement that involves emotion and feeling. Dance is the movement. Music is the emotion. When we combine these in a safe and holding environment it is possible to unfreeze the body bit by bit. Each time we reach out into our dance we invite the body to let go a little more. Each time we connect to joy in our dance, we invite our heart to trust life a little more. Each time we find pleasure in our dance, we reconnect to life in deeper and more meaningful ways.

Vitality is expressed through the dance – and life takes up the invitation to reinhabit that beautiful body of the child, innocent, playful and full of joy.

_Christos Daskalakos