Flow Seekers: The Characteristics of Flow in Social Dance, Part 1
“To feel completely at one with what you are doing, to know you are strong and able to control your destiny at least for the moment, and to gain a sense of pleasure independent of results is to experience flow. The flow state has many names - optimal experience, playing in the zone, feeling on a high, and being totally focused are some of the more common labels. Whatever words you use to describe flow experiences, they’re sure to be associated with the most precious moments in your memory.”
- Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
There has been a lot of research over the past two decades on the concept of flow in sports and other activities. Other writers have contributed to the literature as well with the concept of play, as with Diane Ackerman’s book, Deep Play. Regardless of what you call it, most people have experienced the rare and unexpected feeling of being “in the zone” or “on a high”. The fact that so many books have been written on the topic while the concept itself remains difficult to articulate testifies to the elusive and ephemeral quality of the experience.
Social dancing is such an attractive activity to so many because it is conducive to the flow experience and because it allows us to share that feeling of flow with another person. Anyone who has danced long enough will experience a dance in which everything - the connection with their partner, the rhythm and feeling of the music, the movement of their body - seems so right and perfect that they can’t stop thinking about the dance for days. Moments like these are addicting, and they turn the social dancer into a flow seeker, a person who pursues moments of bliss on the dance floor.
But what is so tantalizing about the flow experience? Why does it leave us wanting more? Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi has written and co-written more than a dozen books on the flow experience in sports and art as well as work and everyday activities and is the foremost researcher on the topic. Borrowing ideas from Csikzentmihalyi’s books as well as Andrew Cooper’s Playing in the Zone, I have selected three characteristics of flow that I feel are the most significant and relevant to social dance.
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