As the holiday season fast approaches, now may be a good time to ask dancers to reflect on why they need to dance? Having a break from the everyday routine, and thinking about the year ahead provides an opportunity to also reflect on “why”?
The “need to dance” if often given as the answer to the question, why do dancers devote their lives with enthusiasm to what is often a relatively short and difficult career. I would like to turn that answer around as a question and search for a reflective answer as to why they feel this need?
Possible approaches to answering this could be psychological (what motivates me), philosophical (why this is in my being), but any answer that digs deep into your mind and body is good. The point is to be reflexive, that is look at yourself in a self-referencing manner. You could use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs below for inspiration or just go with what you think.
So why do you feel the need to dance?
I know this is a very late comment, but I am doing a piece on why dancers dance and this blog popped up as I started my research. I have been dance for 17 of my 21 years of life and i am attending college to peruse it. You ask, why dancers need to dance? It’s because we have to. We are driven to move and express. We don’t have because we need to, we dance because we have to. It is our way of life and our passion. If we didn’t dance then we wouldn’t be living. Or at least that is my opinion.
Hi Angelina, Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Have you read my latest post at http://wp.me/p1OYEJ-d9 where I touch on what you are saying?
[…] meaning”, “it is how I communicate”, “movement is a part of my life”, “it is my true self, my spirit”. All of these answers internalise how they feel and consequently I could suggest they have in […]
Mike, I dance (or danced) because it was the only manner in which my true self, my spirit, not my personality, not just my body, could express itself. Dancing does not fill a need like eating fills the need for food. Dancing isn’t “needing”, it’s “being”. Dancing is a spiritual experience, that’s why we dancers put up with a lot of crap – physical pain, anxiety, injury, low wages, professional disrespect (most people don’t consider it a legitimate job), & short career span. When dancing, the “real” person gets to come out and play and connect with others.
Thank you Renee for your comment. Your words are helping me to understand that this may just be the focus I require for my research. However, it is going to be difficult articulating it as a question.
The psyche is crucial, I guess no one ‘needs’ to dance however dance (ballet) has a history of being a female practice – this comes back to the notion of nature/culture debate. Hysteria in psychology for instance exhibited itself in volatile movement, a movement of madness. People often associate dancing as letting their air down – making an exhibition of themselves! Many men in dance have often been seen to dominate more senior positions in companies and institutions. You cannot get away from gendered bodies.
Gendered bodies certainly would inform individual dancers perceptions of their “need” to dance.
I question the word ‘need’ … ie. why do we need to talk? why do we need to move? why do we need to be? perhaps these are more cultural questions. Certainly there is money in high end arts and culture. Certainly in the field of commercial dance you may find different answers to asking individual dancers not involved in this field. Money, its a job like a footballer, an athlete etc. What is it that makes dance enjoyable? What is the language of movement doing for the body (soma)? How does it communicate, if it even does? Who is dance for – the dancer – the spectator? What is it to master something? Who dances and who directs, choreographs? Is movement placed on the body? How natural is the notion of extension to our bodies?
All good questions that I would like to think about in time. I think the important thing here is what does the dancer mean when they say they “need” to dance. Academic understandings of need are indeed problematic. But what are dancers communicating when they think and say they need to dance? A great topic for fieldwork.
Hello Mike!
I enjoyed this article of yours. I have spent a large portion of my career in music education, and we use dance as a teaching method. If you look into the Dalcroze Eurythmics method, for example, it really gets into the idea of dance being innate, movement is a natural human expression and need, just in the same sort of way that music is apart of life. So I think it isn’t just dancers that need to dance – I think everyone does without even acknowledging it! Maybe its just a tapping of the foot to a good tune, or “twisting” in your seat like an old woman at a Brian Wilson concert, or to an all out dance-floor war, its in us all.
Professional dancers, I imagine, come to realize this need a lot earlier on (or at all), and find the urge completely unquenchable. I danced for a while, and although I am no longer onstage, I LOVE to get out and do a class, or go to a disco, or even a dance in the lounge room with friends after a few drinks. It just feels good, it can’t be stopped or turned off. Maybe you’ve noticed how at weddings all the oldies love to get up and have a dance!
Maybe this has been irrelevant, but there is huge research into music as being both innate and learned, and I really feel that dance falls into this same category.
Merry Christmas, and keep up the blog!
Kelly
Thank you for your reply and kind words Kelly. I will look into the Dalcroze Eurythmics method that you mentioned. The idea of dance, and indeed movement as being innate could be a controversial one which in itself is a good enough reason for me to check it out. The idea of professional ballet dancers realizing the need to dance earlier than the rest of us is interesting. It may be the basis of a hypothesis I could research.
Again thanks and have a great Christmas. btw: I have a sister and mother on the Central Coast. Wonderful place to be with the sun out and a G&T 🙂
cheers… Mike