Reclaiming dance as spiritual medicine
Insights arising from the development of the Earth Dances material: a fertile meeting ground between traditional and neo-traditional African dance and non-stylised and environmental movement, being developed by Denise Rowe since 2010Words: Denise Rowe
Within the history of Western dance there has been a case of mistaken identity. Historically, dance has been dislocated and put into a box: misunderstood to be something to be watched and considered, something that only those with training can do, something that is about what it looks like from the outside rather than what is happening on the inside.
This dislocation has not been confined to the realms of dance alone. In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about the history of humanity as a history of insanity - a history of dislocation, separation and isolation founded on misunderstanding:
“A deep seated collective delusion that lies within the mind of each human being” [1]
And therein lies our problem, for our Western culture has over-emphasised the mind and forgotten the body. Since Descartes’ famous supposition ‘I think, therefore I am’ there has been “an endemic mind-body split in western culture” [2] with our attention focused on one at the expense of the other. In this context dance stands confused, seeking to measure and validate itself according to mind-made values and standards.
During the twentieth century western dance went through many transformations and revolutions with the arrival of modern and post-modern dance, more recent rises in inclusive and community dance practices, and a recognition of the health benefits of dance and movement through the development of somatic practices.
But the Cartesian legacy lives on in our thinking about the world. With advances in quantum physics, science now recognises how our thoughts influence the reality in which we live. It is time to liberate our thinking and reclaim our moving and dancing bodies. It is time to reclaim dance as a spiritual necessity, as a direct line connecting us to our source in the perfection of being.
I have been working for the last fifteen years within the fields of traditional and neo-traditional pan-African dance, mainly with Guinean, Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, Cameroonian and Senegalese forms. For the last six years I have been training in Helen Poynor’s Walk of Life training in non-stylised and environmental movement, developed from the lineages of Anna Halprin and Suprapto (Prapto) Suryodarmo. Since 2010 I have been developing the Earth Dances material from the meeting of these forms.
These dance and movement forms share an implicit commonality: they are dances in connection with the cosmos, they are the awakening of the whole being in relation with environment and the awakening of the body-in-movement’s wisdom, a wisdom that arises when being is awake to itself.
In the 1970s Dr. Thomas Hanna introduced the word somatic to describe the whole and indivisible nature of the human being [3]. Non-stylised and environmental movement works with this whole and indivisible nature of the human being. Through scored movement improvisations they offer an embodied relationship between person and landscape, developing the kinesthetic sense, expanding movement vocabulary and allowing anyone to find their own unique movement voice outside of a specific technique or codification.
The Earth Dances material explores environmental movement in relation to some of the fundamentals of traditional African Dance such as the connection to the cosmos, ancestry, expression, the internal landscape of the dancer and rhythm as a landscape.
Alphonse Tierou, in his book Doople, relates twentieth century western dance with a rediscovery of
“The powerful lines of traditional African dance: unity with the cosmos, the importance of environment and freedom of execution” [4]
Non-stylised and environmental movement provide a location for the exploration of these ‘powerful lines’ outside of form, creating the basis for a new freedom within form. The form then becomes a framework and the space within it a vast territory of body, soul and spirit.
Tierou discusses the way in which traditional African dance is located in and arises from landscape. Environmental movement drops us directly into that meeting place. It goes to the heart of the depth of connection with landscape from which African dance arises. In this place we wake the listening of our bodies to conversations of being and open the possibility for the arrival of practical body-earth wisdom. This is the depth of African dance:
“[African] dance conveys something inexpressible… it is the link between the body, the earth and the sky” [5]
Traditional African dance is concerned with the internal landscape of the dancer. This landscape is where the work of the dance takes place, in its connection to earth and sky but also to spirit, to the unseen, to the mystery.
I have witnessed African dance as a living recognition, celebration and surrender into being. For the Baka hunter-gatherers in the Cameroonian rainforest dance and music are completely woven into the fabric of life, essential for raising the energetic vibration of the people and drawing medicine into the community. These people live right out to their edges and they dance right out to their edges. They are beyond 'dancing'. They are in the place where they are being danced, where spirit is coming through.
Similarly, in an all-night ceremony in Zimbabwe my body opened up to a deeper place of knowing that felt at once ancestral and immediate. Here, inside the dance, it was no longer me dancing: I was allowing the dance to arise as a way of saying 'yes, I am alive and available to life', a way of turning a light on inside myself and becoming visible.
African dance and Environmental movement offer different routes to the same place, either through form or formlessness. It is the meeting of that place that counts, where we are in relationship and open to receive wisdom. As Pearl Primus says:
"The dance is strong magic. The dance is life" [6]
The landscape where the dancer travels is the shared landscape of the soul and is available to everyone. Here all else falls away and we are re-united with that which is true within us. A doorway is opened to a timeless place where being recognises itself. A direct line to the heart of divine mystery arises from this recognition of a wordless truth. This place is spiritual by nature. This place is the present moment:
"The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens... Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realise that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance" [7]
This dance that we are is a dance in connection to the cosmos. It is a dance which cannot lie. This dance opens the doorways of our being to allow that which is eternal to have a voice, returning us to a healthy relationship with life, recognising that all we have is this eternal changing present moment. This is the dance that dances us. This is the dance that finds expression through many African dance forms. Tierou states:
“To dance in the African manner is to recognize that man is inseparable from the universe and that he is fundamentally a divine spark” [8]
It is this recognition that dance and movement take us to, opening a channel for our arrival into the depth and the mystery of the present moment where all is one. It is this that we must reclaim for here is the heart of the matter; our meeting with truth and the medicine it offers us in a world where we have forgotten who we really are.
As Anna Halprin says:
"I believe if more of us could contact the natural world in a directly experiential way, this would alter the way we treat our environment, ourselves, and one another." [9]
The mistaken identity of dance was part of our toning down of the world, because its brightness frightened us, because our own brightness frightened us, and because our connection and responsibility frightened us. But the dance will not be tamed, it is a wildness, it is a direct connection, an exploration into and a celebration of what it is to be alive, it is the pinnacle of our being physically incarnate, being divine in human form, formlessness in form.
To dance in connection to the cosmos is to surrender into the depth of the present moment and to open to the wisdom that arises. This is where our vitality is. It is with us as our birthright. It is spiritual medicine and available to each and every beautiful and magnificent one of us.
There is a teacher present in all things
She is with you at every moment
Eternal, patient, forged from forgiveness and love
She speaks a language your being understands
Expressing herself in life’s many forms
Listen… She breathes
Denise Rowe is a movement artist, choreographer, dancer, musician and creative producer drawing primarily from traditional and contemporary pan-African dance forms and non-stylised/environmental movement. For more information on the Earth Dances programme including details of a summer school being led by Denise in June, contact Denise on [email protected]
References1. TOLLE, E (2005) A New Earth Penguin, p12
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatics Retrieved 28.3.13
3. http://somatics.org/about/introduction/overview-history Retrieved 28.3.13
4. TIEROU, A (1989) Doople. The Eternal Law of African Dance Harwood Academic Publishers, p4
5. TIEROU, p12
6. PRIMUS, P African Dance in WELSH ASANTE, K (Ed) (1994) African Dance: An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Enquiry Africa World Press, p5
7. TOLLE, p 115
8. TIEROU, p12
9. HALPRIN, A (undated) “Artist Statement” http://www.annahalprin.org Retrieved 28.3.13
