Partner Dancing

Partner Dancing

Dancing with a partner has to be one of the representatively beautiful activities of humanity. I’ve witnessed courtship rituals in the animal kingdom that closely rivaled this, yet there is something so intimate and vital about dancing with a partner. It becomes, in a way, the entire field of relating between two people. If we want to go deep into this, it also becomes more restorative when people experiment with changing roles. Many partner dance traditions have a firm distinction between a lead (often male) and a follow (often female), and the way that we must conduct ourselves as a dance partner in each of these roles emphasizes very different learnings. The lead typically is projective, the follow typically is receptive. As the intricacy and skill of the dancers increases, this functional distinction begins to dissolve into something emergent, but focus on projecting (directing) develops different kinds of awarenesses than focus on receiving (listening). To willfully transgress these traditional roles, to switch things up, helps us develop a fuller picture of the capacities required in life. Sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow. There is artistry in both.

This, as yet, hasn’t even gotten us to the question of what kind of partner dancing? Since dance is, so profoundly, a cultural medium, there is such marvelous choice in the kind of dancing that we learn to do with a partner. From square dance, to swing, to salsa, there are dances informal, playful, acrobatic, and stylized. Each of them comes bringing a body of cultural inheritance. So if you find yourself inclined to partner dancing, maybe a first step is to do some research and learn more about what is out there, in terms of dance styles, and what might be available in terms of instruction where you live. Finding, also, the degree of formality of an instructor, or a class, is important. If you are doing this to blow off steam, and your instructor is focused on formal movement and etiquette, you may have a mis-match.

One step down from the structure of formal partner dancing is the informal dancing with your partner. This can happen in the living room or the kitchen, and probably should happen a lot more. We can dance with our kids and our parents. Anytime we are dancing with a partner, the emphasis is on the relationship. We de-focalize, to some degree, our pre-occupation with self, with our own movement, and offer up movement in relationship with someone else. We tune our attention to the other person, listening for the cues of what is important to them, which is a lot like the way we listen to someone else when we are engaged in reflective listening. And it is, perhaps, this shift of attention, away from self, and into the field of relationship, the focus on our partner, the call-and-response, that is the hallmark of partner dancing, and the way it can break us out of a habit of focus on self (or on other).

There is also another, dare we say, polyvagal aspect to partner dancing, and this has to do with developing a more conscious relationship to our energy patterns. For people who have a tendency to appease, and we note here that in our research appease is more associated with groups whose social locations are non-centered (non-dominant, e.g., non-white, non-male, non-hetero, etc.) learning to lead in partner dancing is a useful growth edge that can meaningfully challenge, in the body, patterns of passivity and deference to authority. Because dancing happens in close proximity to another, and because it has a structured quality of movement, for people who tend to appease others, learning to lead in partner dancing can meaningfully confront unconscious aspects of this tendency, and help us to make transformation at the level of the body, which is where this kind of pattern is actually rooted.

In like manner, for people who have a tendency to dominate–either through aggression, ambition, or other forms of power over, learning to follow can meaningfully challenge unconscious patterns of domination. These patterns are generally inculturated into the body first. We learn how to take up space, how to use and move our bodies, and how to relate to others in the context of a socialization process that begins when we are born. From the moment our tiny bodies are stuffed into pink and blue hats (many cultures gender signal from birth), or handled differently at the hospital depending on our ethnicity (studies in the United States have revealed that African-American babies are handled much less gently than white babies(1)), each of us is being socialized as a body into a role in a society.

This process of bodily socialization structures learned behavior around how we occupy ourselves, how we take up space, how much space our family, community, and society generally grant us, and what energy management templates we deploy to survive challenges to our physical, emotional, and mental sovereignty. As somatic abolitionist Resmaa Menakem reminds us, white supremacy is white body supremacy. Correspondingly, male supremacy is male body supremacy. Because of the degree to which the body is deployed as an instrument of violence, and of domination, for those in positions of authority accustomed to embodying power over, the conscious transgressing of these movements is important to learning another way to be in relationship with others. So the more “alpha" a person is, the more partner dancing, as a restorative practice, might suggest that their greatest learning role would be learning to follow.

(1) See Brad N. Greenwood, Rachel R. Hardeman, Laura Huang Aaron Sojourner: Physician–patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns