Dance Is Not Entertainment
DANCE IS NOT JUST ENTERTAINMENT! For many freestyle street dancers, it is a lifestyle, it is a way of life that has helped us, held us and allowed us to express ourselves when we didn’t have anything else.
When we feel alone, dance is there.
When we feel like we’re on a rollercoaster of emotions, dance is there.
When we want to have a whole heap of fun and share vibes, dance is there.
When we want to tap into the depths of our spirit, dance is there.
When we want to get fit and healthy, dance is there for that too.
I don’t think that dance has been given enough credit for the power that it carries, the therapeutic aspects and the holistic nature of what it means to be a dancer or to just have dance a part of your life. I was talking to a guy that I met online and we were talking about how dance is the least paid art of them all and how it’s not really taken seriously by the general public, it’s more so just entertainment. And it’s not even entertainment that gets great jobs or high-paying roles. I have friends around the world who do amazing shows and tours, teach, get sponsored etc. and yet the payment for their artistry is nowhere near what an athlete is. As we were talking about this he said to me “Dancers are the peasants of the world” I asked him what he meant by this and said, “Think about the role jesters played in the Western world, it was only for entertainment”. That blew my mind and is something that I can’t really unsee now. On the flip side, dance has always been an ancient tradition, tribes used it for celebration, rites of passage, healing, war and death. I believe that dancing and art are the higher power/universe/God expressing itself through us without a filter and if you think it’s not, it’s probably the closest thing that we have to it.
There you can enter altered states of consciousness, to the point where the concept of time does not exist, where your head gets clear, where your mind feels free and your body feels high and light because of the chemicals that get released and activated due to the output of movements (physical), creativity (mind) and energy (soul). Every time I dance I feel 10x better than I did before, it’s like the gym except you’re activating more centres and neural pathways in your brain that can really help you change your mental well-being, improve your physicality and the connection to yourself emotionally and creatively and give you a sense that there is something that moves through you that you don’t understand but it feels like home. THAT! Is dancing!
As a Krump dancer, we get to tap into emotions that not every dance style is “ok” with expressing, like anger and rage. You see a lot of dancers tap into sadness, joy, happiness, and fulfilment but not a lot utilise their anger and rage and transfer it into their dancing, I think that this needs to be facilitated more so that we don’t have to hold onto those trapped emotions or traumatic experiences in our energy field.
So for those of you who do facilitate dance workshops and classes please start implementing more of these centres into your classes. The world needs more of it. Just imagine a world where even 30% of people were dancers and loved dancing without being intoxicated in a club, like actually got together and enjoyed each other's energy purely based on their self-expression. What a world that would be!