Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4MxLoJ3ZxgQQFGluhFmDRg?si=d495f54ea7a84f8a
- Morning Side – Four Tet
- Loved Ones (saudades) – Armando Young
- I like trouble – Gaidaa
- Today – Mura Masa, Tirzah
- Where’s the catch – James Blake, Andre 3000
- Lava/Treacle – ELIZA, Jesse James Solomon
- JEWELZ – Anderson .Paak
- Forbidden Feelingz – Nia Archives
- Rider – Mereba
- Woman – Nao, Lianne La Havas
I must have spent hours of my week eyeing up the Ecstatic Dance UK Instagram page before I finally took the plunge. Scrolling and scrolling looking for evidence of people actually going and those people being normal folks. I googled “ecstatic dance for beginners” to understand exactly what the two hours entailed in real terms. I felt like I had to doubt its legitimacy. Ecstatic dance is not a concept I’ve come up against in day-to-day life. Sober free-form dancing? Contact improv?? Cacao ceremonies??? Hackney Wick???? Even as a pretty open-minded girlie myself, it’s not the easiest thing to walk into. The idea of expression through dance really called to me, as a queen of the dancefloor.
The start…
Let me take you back to the pivotal weekend in Cambridge that put me onto ecstatic dance. I was spending the weekend with a long-time friend, hi if you’re reading 🙂 He’s the kind of friend who puts you onto better wavelengths in life and he really facilitated a necessary pivot for me over those few days. But to balance that loveliness out he can also be a wasteman <3
We spent the day being iconic around the town, him – a powerful flower boi being photographed by a roving troupe of amateur photographers – and me – a powerful punting queen absolutely embarrassing the other punts on the water. In the evening we made our way to a cute little gathering of random people he vaguely knew. This is where I first met ‘contact improv’, a dance form where people will improvise movements with each other without words which can come with a range of body contact if you choose it (from hands touching to full lifts).
These folks were contact-improvising in the cleared-out living room like it was the most natural way to dance. All I could do was stand there with a bemused grin on my face trying to figure out their secret. How was that a comfortable non-self-conscious experience for them? How did they know what to do and not do? Why were they not laughing their arses off?
This is all to say that even though I couldn’t relate to this kind of dancing on a practical level, there was something that kept my attention… self-expression was everywhere on that dancefloor. People moved how they needed to, whatever called to them was what they did. There was no real chat, the main sound under the music was the shuffle of bodies moving on a wooden floor. People moved in more lyrical ways. The body contact that did happen was based on exploration and not taking something from someone.
A sidenote about consent
I normally associate body contact on the dancefloor with power dynamics, sexuality, romantic(?) intentions or maybe even social posturing. It was something that happened to you, something to fight off and be wary of. From my POV, sometimes body contact on the dancefloor is something to encourage (maybe it’s fun, maybe everyone else is doing it) but not too much because it can open the door to engagement you never wanted and can’t hold off (which is where friends stepping in to get you away from a guy comes in). My version of dancing with someone did not look like what I saw that evening. That’s where I learnt what proper consent can actually look like both on and off the dance floor.
Let me tell you something, consent is NOT something I have innately understood. The lesson I picked up (for whatever reason) was to let people mould you into what they need to be happy. How to be pliable. How to keep yourself likeable. As a confident woman who knows her own mind, it’s terrifying how much I still have to learn about this. But I am learning.
Here’s what I picked up about consent in this living room in Cambridgeshire:
- Eye contact (or lack of!) helps understand where someone’s at with what they want.
- There is no “yes” without an affirmative sign (ideally a verbal “yes”). It’s a no by default.
- Don’t trap someone, the contact should stay open so they’re free to go aka no holding their arm/wrist/anything that would mean they can’t just move away from you at any point.
- Not taking a no personally, move on and enjoy your dancing. This makes a space where saying no feels safer too (especially for people who label themselves ‘people-pleasing’).
- Saying “no” is also not a permanent no, you’re allowed to change your mind however many times you want. This goes in both directions. So I can in theory say “no” when I’m unsure and come back with a “yes” if I feel like that’s changed. Meaning I don’t have to say “yes” because I don’t want to miss out even if I have doubts.
- Checking in helps for the above reason! Just because they were ok with some fun boogie with you doesn’t mean they’re ok with being lifted etc.
^^^ Now apply this to literally any interaction with another human.
So I learnt what consent looks like. But let me bring us back to ecstatic dance. Oh, before we move on, I did try contact improv and it was really funny to me.
A seed is planted
So the reason ecstatic dance came into play here was because I asked my very cool friend if contact improv was a thing he’d done before and he said in passing “I’ve tried it before but I prefer ecstatic dance because I can do my own thing”. And that was it. Consider the seed planted firmly in my brain. I wanted that level of self-expression, of free movement, but with no obligation to be anywhere except in my own body.
And that was it for ages, I just parked that idea and went on with my life. Until I came upon a rare few weeks staying in London. I was having a great time doing all the things and meeting all the people but in the back of my mind, I was trying to see if it was possible to attend one of these ecstatic dance sessions. Fast forward to a very heavy Wednesday where I’d cracked under the pressure I’d put myself under for weeks and was in tears thanks to setting the bar ridiculously high both personally and professionally. I’d been given some advice by a senior colleague to give myself more grace. I was punishing myself for no reason. And this is where I started my story, googling “ecstatic dance for beginners” and eyeing up the tickets for a session in Hackney Wick.
Wednesday evening rolls around
And I booked it. I had to get out of my head stat! I was missing my body, I missed yoga, I missed my breath. So my intention by going was to see what it was like, shake off all the things that were weighing on me and get reacquainted with myself more kindly. A rainy 1-hour trip across London later, I arrived at the venue sick with nerves and did another walk around the block to make sure I wasn’t the first to arrive. The place was super welcoming. Before the session started I drank some hot cacao which is supposed to have several superfood benefits and I think often precedes this kind of practice because it helps you go inward, focuses you, brings your mood up and gives energy. It was pretty delicious, dark and warming. Plus it gave me a distraction from my growing nerves.
By some stroke of luck, the first person I turned to when I arrived was a woman from Birmingham and I felt a bit more comforted. Eventually, I follow this lady from Birmingham down to the entrance of the room we’d be dancing in. I talk to another lovely guy who has the same shit-eating grin as everyone else when they’re talking about their experience of ED. How good can it be that these people would “never turn back” from the practice? Shoes off, belongings left behind, cacao drank, I enter the room and immediately forget the rule of “no talking” by saying hi to the facilitator sitting inside. I swiftly walk off my embarrassment and try and get acquainted with the space.
A girl walks into an old 1930s public baths
It’s a large wooden-floored high-ceiling room with massive sound system speakers in all four corners. There’s a small spiritual-not-religious shrine on the side with pillows and post-it notes for intention-setting. There’s a soft matted area at the back where some fairy lights glow. Incense hangs in the air like a fleece blanket. The air is muggy from the rain so the smell of wood and feet mix with the sandalwood smoke. I use the features of the room as anchors to help me make sense of what’s going on because for some reason my stomach is absolutely churning and my head is spinning with self-consciousness. I literally can’t make eye contact with anyone so I just face the wall and start stretching off. Thank god for yoga to just be there for my body when all else fails. I’m majorly tight in my upper body and hips nowadays so I use this moment to move into that a bit more.
We are told to make a circle and the opening circle commences. This is an exercise in getting to know the room a bit more, who’s new, who’s next to you, and what the ground rules for the dancing are. Particularly how to read if someone wants to dance with you or not, and how to say no without words. It’s important to note dancing with someone is not the goal of this dancing, it’s just something that can happen. After the opening circle we start being guided through some movement: starting with following the heartbeat, swaying slightly, bringing more of the body into the sway, eventually nearly 70 of us are stomping around the room banging out beats on our bodies.
Getting free
The DJ intentionally plays music to take you on a journey. So as the session continues you might end up naturally reaching some kind of peak and coming back down again, as if you were high. The genres covered included ambient techno, electronica, African drums, eastern influences, soulful beats, proper dance music at the peak and generally a lot of “fluid vibes”(??). It was eclectic and it mostly lacked lyrics.
The actual 2 hours of dancing is hard to explain. I spent a lot of the first 2/3 looking but not seeing what was around me. I was super focused on myself, exploring how I moved and how it felt to move the way I wanted. People existed but it didn’t matter what they were doing. How I was perceived didn’t cross my mind. I was here for me and that was pure freedom. Coming alone was really useful for this as I didn’t have any preconceptions hanging over me, I didn’t have to be the “Poonam” people know, I could just exist. Someone said beforehand that the body knows what it needs so this kind of free movement is like medicine for it. You can do whatever feels right in this space whether it’s stretching, dancing, sitting, lying, meditating, walking, or jumping. It’s all there if you can take a moment to listen to your breath and follow the body.
In the last third of the session, my connection with the people around me felt a bit stronger. I felt brave enough to make eye contact. Sometimes your movements would catch on to someone else or their moves would diffuse into what you’re doing. Magical moments happened when people synced accidentally. Strangely, there was a point where I felt like I was really seeing my body for how powerful it really was. It truly has carried me this far. My hands let me do so much, my knees didn’t give up on me, my shoulders were strong. I can see why the shit-eating grin was so pervasive here.
Rain on me
As we wound down, I ended up on the floor and we stayed in silence for a bit. Slowly a contagious chuckle ripples through the room. There’s so much happy hormone flying around. Dopamine me up. Sweaty, smelly and dehydrated, I left that room lighter than I felt in weeks. I had a rainy 1-hour journey back home, loving the feeling of the water on my skin. Getting back soggy and grateful I was already plotting my next opportunity to attend.