Saturday, April 11, 2015

Ecstatic Dance: To Fly, To Heal, To Love



Ecstatic Dance: To Fly, To Heal, To Love

Article Source: http://the-toast.net/2015/04/07/ecstatic-dance/2/


I wanted to move, but my body would not cooperate. It was a feeling not dissimilar to the paralysis I’ve experienced when wanting to kiss someone for the first time. Mentally, I was able to project myself vividly into the space. In my head, it looked good. On the ground, though, nothing changed. Frustrated by this self-imposed inertia, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure the living-room parties of college: the empty PBR cans, drunk boys jumping on musty couches to New Order and Bruce Springsteen, the blessed darkness. I opened my eyes: Jenny was being solicited for contact improv.

In ecstatic dance, contact improv is initiated by deep eye contact, and often seems to culminate in an entangled limb-nest on the floor. (A woman who had been the subject of numerous unwanted contact-improv solicitations would later offer us a practical solution: dance with your eyes closed.) Feeling overprotective of Jenny, I wiggled my way over, forcing myself into the groove. The piano music phased into beatless chanting, slow jams, reggae, and eventually the sort of electronic dance music that often incorporates saxophone riffs and sounds best in a loud, cavernous space. We stomped and waved and hopped across the floor.

I performed a rapid, mechanical-looking dance-march that I once saw in a nightclub in Berlin, and felt like a videogame character hitting an invisible wall. I had a short flashback to the step aerobics class I took in high school, and wondered whether this might ever become a suitable form of exercise. “Like curriculum-free Zumba,” the ad copy would read, “but barefoot, in harem pants!”

Around the two-hour mark, I went hunting for a water fountain, and fell into conversation with a gentleman named Happy. Happy was sitting on the outskirts of the party, looking content, and he welcomed me in generously by asking whether I wanted his full attention and eye contact – yes, please. Later in our conversation, I learned that he teaches a healing method called Eye Gazing. Happy was exquisitely kind, and told me he’d been part of the Oakland Ecstatic Dance community for several years. A woman ran over and wrapped her arms around Happy’s neck. “Church should be a party!” she said, then scampered off.

“Church is a vessel for spirituality,” Happy clarified, as I fleetingly wondered whether I had inadvertently joined a cult. “People get their freedom in dance, in wordlessness. They get a lot out of their own freedom, and out of other people’s freedom, and ” this is where he lost me “ it leads to deeper and deeper levels of ecstatic freedom, where we find our true nature. There’s a chemistry to ecstasy.” 

Chemistry, ecstasy: sounds good to me! I thought. I was back on board.

As I made my way back to the dance floor, I bumped into the least probable co-worker, Louis, who was taking a much-needed water break. He was wearing a terry-cloth headband, and we greeted one another exuberantly and with mild suspicion. Louis has an advanced degree in computational biology, which is both practical and sane; at the office, I have a well-groomed reputation as a bookworm and a skeptic. Neither one of us seemed a natural participant in ecstatic dance.

Yet there we were, wearing tank tops and blinking at each other through sweat-bunched bangs. As we whispered by the yoga mats, I tried to imagine any other situation in which he, Happy, and I would all be at the same party. I was hard-pressed to come up with a feasible scenario that didn’t involve a mutual bloodline.

By this point, we had reached Peak Ecstatic Dance. People were bouncing and smiling and sweating; a guy who looked about my age removed the bulk of his clothing and did a prolonged handstand.

A woman held two small children and spun them in a circle. An older man in flowing linen pants, a knee brace, and purple socks rubbed shoulders elegantly with a lithe 20-something woman rocking a bleached pixie cut. One man slithered over to another and they writhed around on the floor, eventually emerging with one airborne on the other’s feet. It was clear who the regulars in the crowd were, but for the most part, I’d seen (and done) this sort of dancing before – if you ever attended a Dispatch concert in the early 2000s, you have, too.

Ecstatic Dance is an often wordless practice – people had their mouths closed, opening only to release an excited yowl or heavy breath. It’s also intended to be a nonsexual space, but there were a few people who seemed to violate this principle. A man in tight cotton shorts pogoed vigorously between women, trailing his fingertips down their sides. Men are perfect at ruining things, I thought, as he barreled toward us.
***
It’s hard to explain, but I now feel oddly protective of the Ecstatic Dance community. It’s not my community and likely never will be, but I have to commend the people who belong, who build and grow it. They’ve identified a need and addressed it. They’ve proactively made something beautiful for themselves. No matter what it looks like from the outside, it works: people there glowed with self-comfort. I wished I could get there, and one day I might. Dance, however, probably isn’t my path.

As I watched an older couple hold each other to a reggae remix – she with swollen ankles, he with slight shoulders and white hair – I was moved. Later, sweaty and beat, Jenny and I emerged onto Oakland’s Broadway. Cars sped past; two men walked by, shouting at each other. I felt a little deflated, and also extremely relieved. Maybe I’d lost my edge. Maybe I’d never really had it.
“I’ll think about that older couple for a while,” I said.

Jenny agreed.

“I never want to do that again,” I said.

“Mmm,” Jenny said. We continued to walk. “It’s so peaceful out here,” she said after a while.

“Yes,” I said. And it was.

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