Dance as Resistance
a way to translate the wildness of being human into a creative somatic ritual
Hello Fellow Feelers,
Two quick updates before we jump into all the ways dance can transform us (and the world).
This month’s embodied healing guide is out now! Check it out for ways to deepen your understanding of yourself and your healing journey.
In my most recent episode of My So-Quad Life I break down how I practice accessible yoga with my caregiver. We deserve to move. And feel connected to our bodies—I hope this practice will give more people the permission they need to live in that truth.
Dance has always been an outlet for me, a way to say the things I maybe couldn’t say in the form of words. It was a way to do the things we can’t do within our conventional physical means of expression for whatever reason—our culture deems many.
Dance was a way to translate the wildness of being human into a creative somatic ritual, a limitless place of freedom and magic.
Lately, I've been moving more than I have in a long time. Maybe since before I acquired my disability—outside of A Cripple’s Dance. I’ve been expanding upon what that project opened in me. I’m moving everyday, playing in the wilderness of my wandering vessel. I’m dancing to listen, to learn, to release, to conjure, to feel rapturous joy and to unravel the messages long hidden inside my flesh. It’s a practice that feels like a return home and a deep acknowledgment of my humanness, and the wisdom and beauty within.
This unfurling is at once quiet and tender, big and thrashing, sticky and heavy, light and uplifting. I’m allowing it all to cascade over my bones and flood my insides, rinsing the kept secrets and stifled truths.
Music and breath are guiding my return to this part of me, holding me and lighting my way.
For so long, I couldn’t see how movement could be mine after my injury. I was scared to explore it, scared that it would only bring me deeper heartbreak. Dance used to be the thing that made me feel freer and closer to myself. For years, with my paralyzed body and its limitations, I couldn’t see how this foreign body could do anything other than make me feel further from myself and ultimately…trapped.
How did I fit into movement spaces now? They were all made for able-bodied or non-disabled people, making the spaces feel unwelcoming to me and anyone else who shared my identity as a disabled person. It was all an offensive reminder of a life that I missed and a body that couldn’t do what it used to. A body that wasn’t seen, acknowledged or appreciated the way it used to be. The way it deserved to be. I could feel an overall dismissal of my embodiment, both by myself and the collective outside gaze.
I did what many of us do when we feel our bodies are scary, unworthy, invalid or misunderstood: I disconnected.
But I’ve been waking up more and more. I’ve been allowing myself to open up to my own potential for blooming, and the awakening has been welcomed.
Last week, here on the Big Island of Hawai’i, I went to my first Ho’ike celebration at my roommate’s daughter, Freya’s elementary school. It unexpectedly served as another awakening…
Each class performed their own hula, telling different stories of Hawaiian culture, the people, and the ‘āina (land). Hula is history in motion. It is a way for culture and stories to survive, and it is very sacred to the kanaka (Native Hawaiian) people. Every gesture has meaning. Despite its period of banishment, hula survived. It is a dance of resilience. Later, when the Hawaiian language was banned by the U.S. government, hula was an anchor in cultural preservation. Preserving hula is now part of their kuleana (responsibility), and a way to celebrate their people. Hula is a prime example of how dance exists as a form of resistance. It is a way of honoring a part of us that can never be stolen.
In a packed auditorium, filled with cheering parents and loved ones, I found myself feeling the joy in the room that, in that moment, eclipsed everything else. Tears flooded my eyes as I watched these little keiki (kids) step into their kuleana with such pride and beauty.
In that moment I felt a love for dance that was capturing my heart all over again. I was reminded of its ability to protect and uphold a part of us that can never be broken.
Our bodies are our conduit to joy. To our essence. To each other. To our truth and our history. Across cultures, from the Afro-Brazilian martial art/dance form of Capoeira—which later informed and inspired Break Dance on the streets of the Bronx—to Irish dancing or Riverdance, oppressed people all around the world have found ways to preserve dance and movement, and thereby themselves and their people.
But it isn’t easy. When we feel these forces trying to drive us out, whether they are within our own minds or from the outside world, there is a call from something greater. A call to fight. To adapt. To create. To collaborate.
Sometimes we are called to carve a new path, to find a new way to cling onto the stories of our hearts and the spirit of our humanity. It is there that the sacred pieces of ourselves can survive and thrive. We move as a way to say, we are still here, we belong.