Why Dance?

Hello again, everyone! This is my first legitimate blog post, and it’s always good to start off with a bang. Once it became official in my mind that I was going to be writing a blog, I brainstormed ideas for posts and mulled over which would be the best one to kick everything off with- after all, first impressions are incredibly important. After some consideration and reasoning with myself that this blog is an extension of my professional dance profile, I determined that the most appropriate course of action would be to write about something very near and dear to my heart, yet very relevant to every other page of my website: why is dance so important to me, and why do I want to be a professional dancer?

Why dance? Why art? I’ve heard those questions uttered countless times from the lips of my academic teachers, peers, family… even myself on my most frustrated days. My academic prospects have always been high- in school, I was one that was able to earn near-perfect grades with minimal effort, had a passion for learning and being praised (which translated into being an obsessive rule-follower), and had a practical aptitude for several different academic paths. My talent for writing and English could surely have led to me being a successful editor or publisher someday. I had a knack for debating that would’ve made me an excellent lawyer. I loved exploring history, and in another world I possibly could’ve been an archeologist or historian. Out of all those possible paths that would’ve perhaps been easier, more stable, and led to more figures in my bank account, why did I choose to dedicate my entire life to a career in the arts?

While we’re on the subject of the mind and its pursuits, it’s appropriate to state the obvious: dance is a method of expression and communication. That much is a given. For me, however, it goes so much deeper than just that. Communication has always been one of my biggest struggles as a human being. I find that my thoughts function in two ways- neither conventional, neither easy to express. 

For one, my thoughts are most of the time in abstractions. I never have a steady internal monologue of words unless I’m writing something in my head (or when I’m trying to meditate and my mind decides to rebel). Saying that my mind functions in abstractions makes it sound as if I’m having a constant psychedelic experience, but it’s nigh on impossible to explain how it truly is, for my understanding of my thoughts being abstractions is an abstraction within itself. Even though I pride myself on having a way with words, instead of thinking in words, I think in visions, in concepts, in emotions, in physical sensations.

Secondly, when I’m not thinking in abstractions, my mind functions at a lightning pace. Oftentimes I can process a bulk of information in a millisecond and arrive at an answer or understanding seemingly instantly, sometimes so quickly that my conscious mind is behind and has no idea how I arrived at such a conclusion. This, understandably, makes talking on the spot difficult. I often speak in a rapid jumble of words to keep up with the pace of my brain, but I still have a bad habit of trailing off in the middle of sentences without realizing, for my mouth can’t keep up with my mind, and my mind is already miles ahead. 

To top it off, my feelings are incredibly strong. Like, uncontrollably, knock me off my feet, unable to think of anything else but what I’m feeling in that moment strong. I’m probably one of the most sensitive people you’ll ever meet. Because my emotions are so intense, for years I could never really find a good way to properly express them besides, well, crying, which gets very annoying very quickly, and isn’t sustainable in any sort of professional setting. If dance didn’t exist, I’m sure I would live a tortured existence, feeling voiceless and broken and confused, not knowing what to do with the almost inhuman energies within me.

But, luckily for me, dance does exist.

Physical activity is widely known as a good way to organize and process thoughts, but dance goes so much deeper than that. It’s a phrase seen hanging up on the walls of many a local dance studio alongside other cliches, but dance truly is the language of the soul. Dance not only allows me to slow down and actually be in time with my thoughts, it also provides a way for me to effectively communicate them to others in their purest state, without having to go through the dulling process of transforming them into a communicable form. What better way to express abstractions than through an ethereal and visually stunning physical art? 

As a child (and even still, at times), I would spend entire days listening to music and dancing around the house, halfway for the love of the movement, and halfway because I could finally find synergy with my inner world and bring it to my outer reality. The artistic movement provides a proper vessel to express my otherworldly feelings and feel them to the extent they’re meant to be felt, and also allows me to properly process them and go about my day, functioning as a normal human being. 

When my feelings grow too strong, I often notice that the only way to properly express them is to dance. Once I’ve poured out my soul through all-encompassing, spiritual movement, I automatically feel a thousand times better and more at peace than anything else has proven to make me. Dance is the purest representation of who I am at my deepest core.

In addition to that, there’s something about dancing that feels so profoundly sacred. Nearly every culture has some sort of dance, sacred or not, imbued in its history. It has been used to tell stories, to worship, to celebrate, to socialize. One cannot study cultural history without dance coming up in some way. Due to this universal, everlasting nature, whenever I dance, I feel like I’m a part of something so much bigger than myself. I feel connected to everything that came before me and everything that will come after me. I can feel myself making a mark on history in an absolutely gorgeous way. When I dance, I feel infinitely connected to ancestral souls that danced their own ways through the course of time, guiding me through movement down the dizzying path of human existence.

Piggybacking off of the concept of dance making me feel connected and returning to the conclusion that dance truly is the language of the soul- naturally, dance speaks to the soul. If you do any sort of work in meditation or spirituality, you may be familiar with the concept that souls don’t communicate in words, but rather in feeling states. Feeling states are a relatively abstract concept, but I personally feel that dance is feeling states made visible. 

Because feeling states are the communication methods of the soul, when I dance, the souls of those that are watching me recognize that. I and so many other dancers prefer to dance in live performances rather than video recordings, and part of the reason why is that when I speak to someone with my own soul, it’s one of the few things that can actually reach inside of them and speak directly to their soul. It’s a connection that can’t possibly be wholly communicated through a camera. (Though those that can still put a bit of that experience into film definitely exist, and are truly the most talented among us.) 

The soul is the source of divine connection, so when I’m dancing onstage, I am so infinitely connected to every other person in the room, feeding off of their energy as they feed off of mine, and having a divine spiritual experience. When I dance onstage, people finally see and accept exactly who I am at my deepest core, with none of the restrictions imposed on me by human society in place, even if the character I’m portraying couldn’t be farther from my own personality. And somehow, in the midst of all of this, I can feel and accept the audience at their deepest cores at the same time that they’re feeling and accepting me.

Many say the same of music, and of experiencing music performances in person. Music happens to be married to dance, and the two share the same cultural significance and universal belovedness. A fair bit of historical music was created for dancing. Without music, there can be no dance (even though modern choreographic methods can sometimes have a loose view of what constitutes as music). When these two incredibly profound things are combined and put on a stage, there truly is no experience more divinely spiritual.

Of course, there’s also the element of escapism and exploration. Everyone has different aspects of their personality within themselves, but I’ve always been one of those that feels as if there’s several different people in my head, each with a distinct personality of their own, all vying for dominance in any given situation. Dance, while it can be a way to express myself at my most divine, spiritual level, is also a way to explore all of these personalities through playing different characters onstage, whether they’re given to me a show synopsis or created in my own head to add depth to an abstract piece. It’s an opportunity to play with my acting skills while still having the incredibly transcendent experience I spoke of. It allows me to be any person I’d like to be on a soulful, cellular level, so I never have to spend my life wondering what it would’ve been like if I had let a different part of myself have dominance. In a way, it brings me so much closer to and provides much more appreciation for myself exactly as I am right now.

While I’m in the realm of being something other than myself, I want to bring attention to one of the things I love the most about dance: it is simultaneously divinely inhuman and aggressively human. In regards to dance shows, dancers and spectators alike have been known to question from time to time, “These are funny little worlds we’re being taken into, where people move as a language. Isn’t that sort of weird?” I believe that it’s that fact that makes dance so appealing. It’s as if dance takes both the audience and the dancers into a world where feelings are experienced too strongly to be expressed in words, and are so all-encompassing that they seem to take over the body and come out as movement. As a person who experiences their day-to-day feelings to that extent of strength, dancing is incredibly therapeutic and feels entirely like coming home- a place that couldn’t be found anywhere else before.

Throughout all of me rambling on about how dance is my passion and why I love it, you may be thinking: “Yeah, that’s nice, but why do you feel such a need to do it as a career? Couldn’t it just be a hobby, or something you do for yourself- for your own enjoyment?” That’s a valid point, and there are many people out there that are passionate about dance, yet are completely content with having a day career that doesn’t involve dancing. But as I mentioned before, dance is my home. Any career I think of having that’s not in the field of dance or art feels automatically unfulfilling and inauthentic to who I truly am. I am a person that is filled with the desire to dedicate a huge part of myself to this beautiful art. I want to dance my way through the day and into the night, because when I’m doing that, I’m at my happiest.

Many going into this field worry that having to dance for income will suck the passion and light from it, but I don’t have that fear. When I said that dance was my home, I meant that every single part of it is my home. The lifestyle of a dancer, which is glamorous at times and grueling at others, is part of the appeal for me, and it always has been. Dance feels like family to me- there are things I like and things I don’t, between us deep secrets are shared and annoyed begrudgements are exchanged, each party witness to hilarious moments and blowout arguments alike. But at the end of the day, we love each other more than anything.

-Ryn

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