Finding Flow on the Dance Floor, Part 3: Social Dance as Conversation
“Flow is a harmonious experience where mind and body are working together effortlessly, leaving the person feeling that something special has just occurred…This is because flow lifts experience from the ordinary to the optimal, and it is in those moments that we feel truly alive and in tune with what we are doing.”
- Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
It has been called flow, peak experience, optimal experience, the zone, and deep play. The concept has been widely experienced and researched, and yet it remains elusive. Generally understood to be a rare, short-lived, and unexpected occurrence, it can’t be controlled, summoned, or grasped. However, the pure joy and freedom it brings prevents us from just dismissing it altogether. We continue to seek these moments because they hint at something greater and validate the time and effort we spend in their pursuit.
For the social dancer, flow provides the unrivaled feeling of deep connection with his or her body, the music, and another human being. Every social dance – from salsa and Argentine tango to the ballroom dances and west coast swing – requires physicality, musicality, communication, problem-solving, and creativity. These exhilarating challenges open up opportunities to experience flow. Although we can’t guarantee its occurrence, we can approach the dance in a way that will maximize our receptivity and, therefore, our likelihood of feeling that transcendence.
Because dance has so many layers or levels of meaning and understanding, it helps to look at approach flow in social dance from several different angles. Though there could never be an exhaustive or comprehensive list of approaches to the dance, my research of flow and the social dance experience have revealed four main approaches that help illuminate and cultivate flow on the dance floor:
Social dance as Sport.
Social dance as Game.
Social dance as Conversation.
Social dance as Art.
Part 3 will address how social dance can be approached as a conversation. Please see also Parts 1, 2, and 4 for how to approach social dance as a sport, a game, and an art.
Social Dance as Conversation.
“Striving to be ourselves while we learn to pay attention to others can be a transformative experience. As a result of the creative process of learning and dancing the tango, an encounter takes place between what is inside you and what is inside your partner. This connection is magical and uplifting… To date, there seems to be no limit to the depth this shared experience can reach. Enthusiasts sometimes resemble spiritual seekers as they work to refine their lead and follow sensitivity, so that they might detect increasingly more subtle changes in posture, position, or energy. This heightened sensitivity awakens our deepest intuitive and creative forces, and sets them to music.”
- Sharna Fabiano
The essence of social dance is partnership – the coming together of two bodies and minds to create a single dance that fully expresses the uniqueness of both. No discussion of flow in social dance would be complete without an exploration of the conversation that takes place between two people on the dance floor. Conversation is an appropriate word because it implies an exchange – of information, of ideas, and of energy. This exchange can progress from a common language to mutual self-expression to entrainment that leads to flow.
Conversation – in dance as in life – requires that the conversers build a common language with which they can communicate. This can be as simple as nonverbal cues – as is necessary with babies or between speakers of different languages – or as complex as best friends who not only speak the same language but also understand each other’s body language, cultural and historical references, and even mood swings and jokes. Building a common language is necessary for any true communication to take place.
The first step in learning social dance is developing the basic vocabulary needed to start a common language with other dancers. The framework of the dance – from the basic rhythm to the step structure to the technique of leading and following – teaches the dancer a way of communicating with others. These are the words and parts of speech both partners will need in order to start putting sentences and ideas together, and to understand the sentences and ideas of others.
The ultimate goal of these building blocks is communication, which is made up of two parts: the expression of self and the expression of other. Depending on the personality and background of the dancer, one or the other may prove to be the more difficult or challenging. However, both are important in creating a dance that allows both partners to equally receive inspiration and express themselves.
To engage in a conversation with another person requires a commitment to listening and being attentive to him or her. To fully engage and get the most from the experience, it also requires an appreciation of the uniqueness of the individual. Every person has their own singular set of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. As a result, every partner will bring a new perspective, a new way of moving, and a new energy to contribute to the partnership.
While the individuality of the other can be exciting and inspiring, it can also cause fear and uncertainty. The uniqueness of the other person implies a degree of unpredictability, which is to say that one’s partner is to a certain degree an unknown and uncontrollable variable in the dance. Allowing one’s partner to express him or herself in the dance requires letting go of the need for control and giving up any preconceived expectations of how the dance should unfold. It allows giving the other person equal creative power in the dance. Only when this is allowed to happen can both partners move together spontaneously and in the moment to create something unique, instead of each half of the partnership dancing to their own tune and feeling disconnected.
Stephen Nachmanovitch, in Free Play, emphasizes this commitment and trust when collaborating for any artistic endeavor: “In playing together, there is a real risk of cacophony, the antidote to which is discipline. But this need not be the discipline of ‘let’s agree on a structure in advance.’ It is the discipline of mutual awareness, consideration, listening, willingness to be subtle. Trusting someone else can involve gigantic risks, and it leads to the even more challenging task of learning to trust yourself. Giving up some control to another person teaches us to give up some control to the unconscious.”
While letting go of the need to control the dance can be daunting, the expression of self can be an equally scary proposition. This is because in dancing the body – one’s physical self – is the instrument of expression. The product is located in one’s own vessel, the action played out on one’s own body, available for all to see and judge. And on top of that, true social dance is by nature a spontaneous creation, without previous rehearsal or choreography. So if every act of creation – from painting to music to writing – puts the creator in a position of vulnerability, social dance does so to an even greater extent.
This greater vulnerability, however, also offers greater opportunities and richer rewards in the realm of authentic movement and freedom of expression. Instead of dancing to impress or be accepted by others, the dancer can let go of these conscious thoughts and surrender and respond to the inspirations offered by the music and their partner’s energy. Trusting in one’s abilities and creative interpretations allows relaxed concentration (see Flow Seekers: The Characteristics of Flow in Social Dance) as well as the confidence to bring their own unique energy to the dance and to own their movement.
Once these two halves – the expression of one’s partner and the expression of self – are fully and completely accepted and embraced, true conversation and connection can take place. They progress from a call-and-response – one person acting and another reacting – to constant and simultaneous giving and receiving within the dance. When this sharing of energy takes place, the dance truly becomes something special, a unique expression of two individuals that can never be recreated in the exact same manner.
Stephen Nachmanovitch beautifully expresses this spontaneous creation by two individuals in Free Play:
“I play with my partner; we listen to each other; we mirror each other; we connect with what we hear. He doesn’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where he’s going, yet we anticipate, sense, lead, and follow each other. There is no agreed-upon structure or measure, but once we’ve played for five seconds there is a structure, because we’ve started something. We open up each other’s minds like an infinite series of Chinese boxes. A mysterious kind of information flows back and forth, quicker than any signal we might give by sight or sound. The work comes from neither one artist nor the other, even though our own idiosyncrasies and styles, the symptoms of our original natures, still exert their natural pull. Nor does the work come from a compromise or halfway point (averages are always boring!), but from a third place that isn’t necessarily like what either one of us would do individually. What comes is a relevance to both of us. There is a third, totally new style that pulls on us. It is as though we have become a group organism that has its own nature and its own way of being, from a unique and unpredictable place…”
While this spontaneous co-creation of the dance with another person can happen every time as long as both partners are willing and committed, there is a deeper level of experience that can be attained. It is that elusive feeling of flow with another person that cannot be controlled or summoned at will, but can nonetheless be experienced more often when both leader and follower seek this more meaningful exchange on the dance floor. Scientists and other researchers have observed this phenomenon – which they call entrainment – in the physical world. Barry Green, in his book The Mastery of Music: Ten Pathways to True Artistry, gives a brief history of this research before applying it to the more intangible world of musical performance. His observations and experiences in the world of music can just as easily be applied to dance
“It strikes us as magical, beyond coincidence, almost supernatural even, when highly individual musicians merge into a perfect synchronized whole, as though they are all parts of a greater body, as though music itself has the beat and is passing through them,” writes Green. “Researchers have come close to explaining what happens when musicians merge their musical energies in this kind of nonverbal, rhythmic union: they call it a form of entrainment.” Green goes on to describe the origins of the concept in the study of pendulum clocks that over time fall into the same exact rhythm, more precisely than the makers had the ability to match mechanically. Green draws a beautiful comparison between the entrainment of pendulum clocks and the entrainment of musical performers.
In the book Green also describes his own personal experience of entrainment with a colleague: “Often when Jim plays with me, it feels to me as if we have transcended time and are lost in a fantasy world. It’s as though we are riding a boat through some rapids. The thrill of the music is like the river, our bodies both respond to the musical current – and the two of us steer from the front and back of the boat in perfect synchrony. I think part of what this analogy tells me is that while we still have some power to steer the boat, we are also negotiating a current with its own rhythm, it’s own natural shape.”
This “current with its own rhythm, it’s own natural shape” is flow, the experience of which sends countless people to the dance floor in its pursuit. While there are many facets to these encounters, the feeling of deep connection is perhaps the deepest and most meaningful. It is also the most unique to social dance, as in no other art or sport are two individuals required to be in such close physical proximity in addition to the mental, emotional, and even spiritual communion that many partner and group activities provide. This intimate act of creation with another person is the art of conversation that brings the dancer closer to the experience of flow.
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