Why you need dance in your life
It’s is not just about your future health — dance is part of who you are already.
Dancing can improve your fitness — yes
Dancing is fun and can make you feel happy — yes
Dance is great as a social activity — yes
Dance is great for your brain — yes
Anyone can dance — yes, absolutely!
BUT that’s not all!
In recent years we’ve seen a (very welcome) rise in awareness amongst wider society of the benefits of dance for health and wellbeing.
Finally dance is being taken seriously by scientists, doctors, and other health professionals on a more public-facing scale, with a move towards being considered a crucial element for the lives of our communities, rather than just ‘something nice to do’ for certain groups of people.
For someone who has been working in this field for over a decade and has been dancing her whole life this is a welcome step forwards and I am all for promoting the wellbeing benefits of dance.
However, are we forgetting that dance and movement are actually part of our makeup as human beings too? As is creativity, expression, and the need for joy, compassion, and belonging — all things that dance offers.
It’s not just about going to a dance class to improve your health, it’s about tapping into your human instinct to move in order to help you make sense of the world.
I started dancing because it was an outlet for my anxiety — I felt that I could be myself when I was dancing, and so this was how I needed to communicate who I am to the world.
Yes I’ve been dancing since I was 4 but I actually dropped out of traditional ballet classes as soon as I could and spent my childhood dancing in after school clubs at my primary and secondary schools. I didn’t follow the traditional childhood dance training route that so many professional dancers have.
I danced because it made me feel good and I sought out classes and environments that supported me in this. My dance teachers in early childhood were not professional dance teachers — they were primary school teachers who put on brilliant after school clubs to give us something creative and fun to do. They inspired us to have fun creatively and therefore we also made new friends, improved our communication skills and expressed ourselves in a positive way.
I don’t remember learning steps or technique much, instead we made choreographies with our friends, inspired by our favourite stories or topics, and performed them to anyone and everyone!
I choreographed all of the time — my friends and I would spend hours in my living room creating the world’s most amazing pieces, including costumes, props (furniture), lighting (don’t underestimate how much atmosphere a lamp can provide!) and setting the music. Then when it was ready we’d invite our families to watch (this would all take place in one evening!).
I basically lived in a turquoise leotard and purple tights throughout my childhood.
I didn’t care about whether the work I created was creative, exciting, new, ‘original’; instead I knew instinctively that the joy my friends and I experienced whilst doing it was what made it worth sharing.
The experience of dancing was the important bit, not whether I was getting the steps right, could do the splits, or could jump the highest. It was the sensation of moving that I felt in my body and mind that gave me those precious moments of joy and release.
As I got older and decided to pursue dance as a career I never lost this instinctive need for movement and expression. Even on the days when my body was so sore from hours of rehearsals, I kept going because it was part of me.
I meet lots of people who say they can’t dance or hate dancing and that’s ok. Most people I meet who say this do so out of fear — they consider dancing to involve showing up at a dance class, learning difficult steps, being able to do crazy things with their body, having to ‘be good’, uber fit and healthy, or having to reach ‘perfection’. All of these are pretty terrifying.
Thankfully they are not what the essence of dance is.
Dance is movement and creativity.
Movement and creativity are essential to our lives.
Dance combines other essential elements, such as joy, communication, expression, and empathy too.
Dr Peter Lovatt, a renowned Pyschologist (aka Dr Dance), explains:
“We communicate through dance and body movement, such that the way we move might be influenced by how we feel and, remarkably, we can recognise a person’s emotional state from the way they move their body.”
Have you ever recognised someone from the way they walk before you actually see their face?
Can you tell when a friend or family member is upset just by their posture?
When Wonder Woman stands tall you can tell she’s brave, confident, and is a total ‘badass’ just by the way she’s standing! Right??
It’s the same with babies. We focus on movement from the very beginning to help us keep track of their development — lifting their head, similing, looking, rolling, sitting, bringing hands together, reaching for objects, standing, walking.
There’s been a lot of research into babies’ instincts in regards to dancing and rhythm too and many people consider dance to be instinctive for babies. Babies start dancing and responding to music before they start speaking.
Therefore this is now considered innate in humans by researchers. Heather Whipps, from Live Science, writes:
“the ability to dance may have been a factor in survival for our prehistoric ancestors, who used their moves to bond and communicate with each other when times were tough.”
Dancing isn’t alien or separate from everyday life. Regardless of whether you’ve danced in your life or not, whether you like it, or whether you consider yourself to be any good at it, dance is part of who you are as a human being.
This doesn’t mean you need to get to your nearest dance class as soon as possible (or ever). It also doesn’t mean you should be one of the people on the dance floor at a family wedding (unless you want to be!).
It means that you already have knowledge and experience of moving inside of you and you can use this to help you make sense of the world.
Consider this — what is your natural reaction when a good song comes on the radio, or you play your favourite album?
Do you feel emotion?
How do you move? And by move, I mean anything from a change in posture or tapping a finger, to getting your whole body dancing.
Music is an essential part of this too, as Dr Peter Lovatt explains:
“Sound moves you because music connects with the emotional, physical and cognitive areas of your brain. You feel an urge to move to music because auditory-sensory information (e.g. sound) activates the areas of your brain responsible for movement, giving you an urge to move. This is called “groove”. Everyone has groove, you are born with it.”
Dance doesn’t have to mean going to a class, learning steps, achieving a certain level of fitness, aesthetic, or technical skill, or having to perform in front of others.
This also isn’t about ability — yes, some people are considered better dancers than others, and there’s research behind that too, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tap into our natural instincts to move and use this to help us live happier, more connected lives.
3 questions to consider the next time you experience moving to your favourite music:
- What does it feel like as you move? (even if you are just tapping your toes or change how you are sitting/standing/lying)
- What emotions are you experiencing?
- How do you feel afterwards?
Think of this like a dancing meditation — focus on the experience to help yourself feel more connected (to your body, self, and others), cultivate self-reflection, and process your emotions and thoughts, so you can move positively through your day.
Remember, it’s about following your body’s instincts in regards to movement, and it’s ok if this means a tap of the foot or a finger rather than actually dancing or moving your whole body.
This isn’t about HOW you move, instead it’s about trusting your own instinctive understanding of movement and tuning into the experience of this to help increase your awareness of what you are capable of, process your emotions, and ultimately live in line with your values.
Let’s celebrate the fact that movement and dance are part of our ancestry and biology.
Let’s support each other to get moving and have fun doing it.
Let’s dance!
