I want to share with you this article by Kimerer LaMothe, she express in words what every dance therapist and every dancer knows with every cell of their bodyselves.
Enjoy!
To Dance Is a Radical Act
To dance is a radical act. To think about dance, to study dance, or to practice dance in this 21st century is a radical act.
Why?
Because if dancing matters—if dancing makes a difference to how we humans think and feel and act-then dancing challenges the values that fund modern western cultures.
How so?
1. Mind over body. A first and fundamental value of western cultures is the one that privileges our mental capacity, in particular our ability to reason, over and against our feeling, sensing, moving bodily selves. I think therefore I am. We believe that "we," as thinking minds, can exert control over our bodily actions, and that we should. We believe that achieving such mind over body mastery is good, and even our ticket to success in any realm of endeavor.
This idea that reason is our definitively human part was greeted with much hope and fanfare by early modern philosophers and politicians, economists and poets. If only all humans can learn to exercise their reason, it was thought, then many minds will be able to arrive at the same answer-at true and certain knowledge, at a common good, at world peace.
