Aaron · Dance & stage
The body speaks before words emerge.
Dance showed me what it feels like to be fully present with others, whether we’re moving or standing still, with nothing to prove or achieve.
My way into dance
Being together without having to do anything.
For years I often felt frozen inside. Dance gave me a way back to feeling. When I went a long time without a class, I would freeze up again. While I was dancing, though, I could experience something different.
I remember one of my first dance classes. We had moved together, then suddenly everyone stood still. We listened to our breathing and the music. No one had to perform. We were simply there together, sharing the present moment. For the first time since my adolescence, I felt emotions begin to move again. I was deeply touched.
What moved me was not only that I could feel myself again. We were all aware of our bodies: our breath, the afterglow of movement, the music. In that awareness, I could be present with others without having to say, show or achieve anything. I was not alone, yet I did not have to adapt myself either. I had not experienced togetherness like that for a long time.
What movement made possible
Moving took all my attention
Dance gave me so much to attend to that there was little room for looping thoughts: telling right from left, remembering a sequence, hearing the rhythm, keeping my balance, sensing the space and staying connected with the group. It took all my attention - and brought me into the here and now.
I loved that freedom, even though it often lasted only as long as I was dancing. A day off could be dreadful: I would feel frozen and on edge again. Dance gave me something precious, but there was more going on. Later I came to describe the feeling as being stuck in sympathetic activation, constantly on alert and frozen at the same time.
Much later I also found a bodily perspective on this experience. Ruth Lanius and Breanne Kearney describe how the vestibular system informs us about balance and movement in space, and how these senses may relate to body awareness and the regulation of arousal. That helps me understand why turns, shifts of weight and finding my place in the group reached me so directly. But it does not explain everything - least of all the closeness to others in that quiet dance class. Nor does it prove that dance treats trauma. Read the article by Kearney and Lanius
Looking back, I can see that dance helped me get through that time. My training in Somatic Experiencing later gave me other ways to understand feeling frozen and on edge. What stays with me about dance itself is the pleasure of moving and those moments when I could be fully there with other people.
On stage
Movement arises in relationship.
Art and boundaries
Between freedom and expectation.
Professional dance also brought a tension. Where performance, precision and the next step matter, there is often an expectation to push beyond your limits. For me, that did not always fit with what had helped me about dancing in the first place.
I love the intensity of making something as an ensemble. I’ve also learned to notice when a movement challenges me in a way I enjoy, and when I start to lose touch with myself. I bring that question into bodywork: what can we do here that feels right and that we can sustain?
Contact
Would you like to know more about my journey?
Feel free to write if you have questions about my work, workshops or a possible collaboration.
Ask about a session