Dancing is For Disabled and Sick Bodies Too
How the new show, Dying for Sex, showcases the healing power of somatic movement - Part 2
Disclaimer: If you haven’t yet seen dying for sex, do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s a love letter to friendship, death, sexual healing, and true embodiment. For more context, I invite you to read Part 1 of this two-part series, Sensualizing a Medicalized Body.
I can think of two times that I have cried while watching a dance scene:
One being the ending scene in Billy Elliot. And the other officially goes to Michelle Williams’ dance in the new Fx limited series, Dying for Sex.
Michelle‘s character, Molly, while in a group therapy session for her terminal diagnosis with cancer, is invited to use movement as a means to work through her experience. The therapist, played beautifully by Esco Jouley, offers a brilliant somatic exercise, combining spoken word and movement, to find space for healing, joy, and humor.
Molly denies the first invitation, but at home later, while discussing her experience with sexual abuse, something opens up for her. With her best friend as her only audience member, in a moment of immense grief and courageous surrender, she starts to move her way through her trauma in a rapturous dance.
It begins as Molly‘s face lights up, she pauses with one finger in the air, as if claiming both time and space for her dance, her truth, her story, everything she’s kept inside. She seems innocently awestruck, like Alice in Wonderland herself, as she follows the wandering swirls of her conducting finger.
It leads her to standing, then across the room on a wild journey, much like her journey towards death while exploring new depths of her life.
From there, her movement intuitively ripples, bursts and floats through every part of her. One minute it’s explosive, and the next it’s like dust…falling…settling.
Every motion explores qualities of pain and comfort, chaos and calm, lightness and dark, fear and trust, and everything in between. What unfolds is a fecund and stunning catharsis.
It leaves Molly herself speechless, and her best friend in tears.
Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes the words are stuck, forced up against the walls of a dam, contained by the levy that is our internal world, our fear, our wounds. Sometimes there is no way to translate the hurt that we feel. Sometimes all there is to do…is move.
After my injury, I was scared to dance. I put my identity as a dancer on a shelf, and tucked it away, as if it wasn’t mine anymore. I had spent my whole life knowing that I was a dancer, loving that I was a dancer, and then just like that…I wasn’t.
It took me a long time to uncover what internalized ableism and grief had stolen from me. It was a lot of work to understand that an identity as a dancer, wrapped up in able-bodiedness, could in fact survive and thrive outside of cultural restraints and limiting definitions.
I had to learn that dance could be mine, regardless of what it looked like, even without movement of 75% of my body.
I had to learn to redefine what being a dancer was for me.
I had to learn how to move again.
I had to move for me, and no one else.
There was so much stuck inside of me that I needed to get out — the anger, the profound sadness, the fear, the confusion, the loneliness of being in a still and quiet body.
Dance had been a way for me to process the pain and the beauty of life. It had been my outlet for everything that lived inside of me, everything that words couldn’t release from the deep.
All those years growing up dancing, I don’t think I had ever realized how much dance was doing for me behind the scenes. It built bridges for new patterns to develop, altering neural pathways. It allowed new information to plant itself, like seeds of change, and for root systems of safety and resilience to grow.
Dance alchemized the stories that would otherwise claim their stake or die within me. It got me through loneliness, heartbreak, loss, abuse, everything.
It always started with an improvisation, informed by an inner truth, a message, a story. Then that became a phrase, then a paragraph, and finally a story told through fingers and toes, flesh and bone.
Dance tethered me when I was adrift and it set me free when I was in chains. Coming back to it was like coming home.
I dance every day now. I dance in whatever way feels good to me, to silence or to music, and always to breath. I dance to feel free. I dance to celebrate, to listen, to validate, and to release me.
When I witnessed Molly’s dance, I saw myself in her. That is what art is all about — an invitation, a reflection. And Molly invited me to keep dancing, keep healing, keep looking, keep seeing me. She invited me to take ownership of my body in any given moment, and embrace its wisdom.
Her dance wasn’t performative, it was intuitive. It told a story. Her story. A story of the wildness of life, and the therapeutic power of unleashing the tales within us.
So dance. Dance when you’re sick and when you’re tired. Dance when you’re trapped and when you’re free. Dance alone or in communion. Dance when you’re sad and when you’re happy. Definitely dance when you’re angry. And dance every time in between. Because it’s yours. Your story lives within you, and it deserves to be told.
We don’t have to be dancers to dance. We don’t have to be anything, just ourselves. Dance is for ANY BODY. EVERY BODY. It’s for you.
Big love,
KP
A somatic invitation:
I invite you to write a poem or just a little something, nothing fancy, that acknowledges a story of yours that wants out. Something you have endured, or something that you are enduring right now. Words to honor your experience. Words to acknowledge the effort and all the emotions that this story created and that it holds.
Record it — Use an app on your phone, or whatever works best for you.
And then dance to it. You don’t have to choreograph anything, just move in a way that feels authentic and good to you. It doesn’t have to look pretty or be particularly “dancy.” Just listen to your body and your words, and move. Bonus: take it a step further, put some music on, and see what it feels like to dance to that.
Then journal about what is was like. How did it feel? What came up or out? How do you feel different? Take note of how you feel over the next day or two. And drink lots of water, always.
Xoxo,
Kels