why we dance

In his book Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation, Paulo Freire writes, “The earliest language was body language...” Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose work centered on education, power, oppression, and liberation. He challenged the idea that knowledge is something only handed down by experts, arguing instead that we create knowledge through lived experience, dialogue, reflection, and questioning. Freire was interested in what happens when we privilege certain kinds of knowledge and communication over others. When we treat spoken and written language as the most legitimate ways of knowing, we leave out a huge part of what it means to be human. Our bodies are also places of knowledge. They communicate. They notice. They remember. They respond.

This idea makes me think about the ways our bodies are disciplined by the world around us.

So much of dominant Western culture teaches us that there are appropriate ways to sit, stand, dress, work, rest, speak, move, and take up space. We have built entire institutions around separating the mind from the body, privileging intellectual and written knowledge while often treating embodied knowledge as less serious, less productive, or less valuable.

Just look at a suit and tie. Look at high heels. Look at the ways we're expected to sit still for hours at work or school, to keep our bodies quiet and contained, to dress our bodies in ways that communicate professionalism. Of course, we can reclaim these things. We can wear the heels because we love them. We can wear the suit because it makes us feel powerful.

And. Something really beautiful happens when we create a space where our bodies don't have to perform a normative social role. We've started teaching our Body Language dance class at Bowdoin College on Monday nights (in addition to the one that we continue to offer at ECC, at the same time), and it's open to staff and students. People come in unsure of what to expect. Sometimes they look nervous or stiff. And then, little by little, they start moving together. They laugh. They sweat. They move in ways they didn't know they could. They find moments of improvisation that come from their own experiences and instincts. We don't teach them how to dance. We create the container for them to move. We start with a trauma-informed, welcoming introduction. We turn the music way up. We give people lots of room to do their own thing. And then we see what happens.

So what happens when we create containers where we can move and dance freely? We all experience the world through our bodies. And our bodies don't move through the world on equal terms. For people with marginalized identities, our bodies can be a particularly complicated place to live. We are constantly receiving messages about how we're supposed to look, move, dress, take up space, speak, sit, work, rest, and even experience pleasure. Some bodies are expected to be smaller. Quieter. More productive. More "attractive". More masculine. More feminine. Younger. Less disabled. Less visibly queer. Less angry. Less tired. Less deviating from the dominant culture. We learn, often very early, which kinds of expression will be rewarded and which will make other people uncomfortable. This isn't only oppressive for people with marginalized identities. The systems that teach some of us to make ourselves smaller, quieter, more productive, or more palatable ultimately constrain all of us.

Imagine if we felt genuinely free to do what our bodies needed/wanted, whenever we needed it. Imagine if dance breaks at work were completely normal. If lying down in the middle of a meeting because you needed a moment to reset wasn't frowned upon. If wearing clothes that felt comfortable, joyful, expressive, strange, practical, or beautiful to you mattered more than dressing for someone else's approval. If moving your body didn't have to mean exercising, improving, burning calories, changing your shape, or becoming more disciplined. If we could stretch, sway, shake, rest, stomp, wiggle, dance, or be still simply because our bodies were asking us to. Can you imagine? How liberating! This is a big part of why we dance at Electric Cottage Collective.

We dance together at Body Language throughout the week. We throw dance parties a few times a year. Coworking members can use the classroom during their workday for a dance break, a stretch, a lie down, or whatever their bodies need. We bring in pop-ups that introduce us to dance forms and movement practices from cultures near and far. Come dance with us!