Never-Ending Dance
It was a good contact jam…
I danced with a number of people, most of them male, and then I had a dance with a woman that was free and wild. It went on and on. I could feel us communicating, each making a movement, pushing, pulling. We were using some of the tips from the earlier class, separating, spinning each other. When we slammed back together it was shockingly vigorous…
I lost myself a little in that dance
When she raised her hand towards the ceiling, mine following, our two sets of eyes followed too, and things slowed down. I felt relief, and empty at the same time, as the dance ended.
Stepping back I closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw the artificial candles by the wall — I stood in a pool of light facing away from the dance, cocooning back into myself. Feeling separate from all the other dancers, I looked over at her, sitting on her knees on the other side of the room facing the dance, unmoving. I wondered if a dance boundary had been crossed if both of us were knocked out of the dance by our encounter.
I took a while recovering, and savoring. I felt emotionally regulated and secure in my body, watching the artificial candles artificially flicker.
When we’re regulated by others we step into a place of trust where we can open our eyes and be present without a need to perform
Drinking from my water bottle I stood behind her, out of her field of view. Drifting back into her view on the far side, I began to move in relation to the room.
A guy came up to her and they began to dance. I felt jealous and relieved. I had hoped our dance hadn’t set either of us off of our emotional balance, had been concerned about her as she sat unmoving. Now, as she demonstrated she was ready to dive back in, my perspective changed: I felt jealous that this encounter had not left her in need of me to put her right, that she was fully disengaging from our dance to begin a new dance with someone else when I had not yet done so.
Had I secretly wanted her to be unfulfilled by anyone but me? Yes! And yet, deeper in my heart, and truer, was my desire that all interaction with her and with everyone in my life be without strings. Love, affection, intimacy, yes. But to be thrown off of balance by the other and co-dependently enmeshed, no.
A guy came up and offered to dance, which we did for a bit before I slowed down and he disengaged. Even so, this cleared me of her energy and opened me back up to the rest of the world. So logical from my point of view as an individual, but harder to accept when another disengages from me when I have not yet fully separated from them.
When Merrick put her foot against mine I was ready. Not needy, simply available and confident of being present with another. I felt the inevitable calibrating as I stood up and put my weight onto that foot, naturally pressing my ankle against hers.
A new dance begins, yet has the other ended? The stickiness is cleared, yet an energetic relation remains with or without emotional clinging. Why not let go of the other and appreciate the true dance that remains?
Merrick and I practiced the letting go into space and re-connecting she had taught in class. Each time we let go I had a momentary sense that the dance was over, and yet, because of the instruction, I knew it wasn’t. We remained connected without touch. But then again, it would have to end sometime, so part of me also wondered if it was coming to an end. And then it was. At some distance on the floor, my hand and her foot still in contact. Then stillness. Then sustained separation.
Separated, it still wasn’t clear the dance was over. I remained conscious of her, to the point that I looked up a couple of times to see whether she looked back. She didn’t. She was quiet. I became still, as I often do after dances. As with my prior dance partner, I wondered whether she was okay. The music shifted and my attention went to it, while still aware of her a few feet away.
Merrick and I talked after the jam and she said she also felt the dance continue after we separated. I believe the repeated separations during the dance cued our nervous systems to awareness of a continuity of engagement. The dance still seems to be going on even now, a week later. I mean, of course if Merrick and I are friends that is a dance over a much longer timeframe, so of course it continues. Every connection is a dance without end.
The dance before it, the wild one, continued in the background even as Merrick and I spoke about our dance and the idea of dances not ending. As we talked, the other dance partner was nearby looking at art in the corner of the studio. She and I talked next, a continued dance.
We live dances within dances.
