In Favor of Ugly Dance

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m a big fan of ugly dance. There’s something about an awkward elbow, a gnarled hand, a flexed foot out of alignment that pleases me. I watch dancers, their eyes shut, their foreheads furrowed, as their hands grope into blind space, and I want to burrow inside their skin and find out what they are experiencing. Are they seeing the metallic surfaces, webbed strands of light, cabinets with keyholes? Are they meeting their ghost fathers, their unborn children, their gods?

After a dance, sweaty and relaxed, we pile on the floor and make general comments, “That was so good.” “The DJ was really on tonight.” But somehow those moments of trance are like dreams that slip away, only leaving a few tendrils of physical presence – the press of my unborn seven-year-old daughter’s head against my stomach, the chill mist of bardo where I met my translucent father during his slow transit away from life.

Sometimes during a dance, I’ll “wake up” a little and realize that I’ve been contorting again. Dripping with sweat, my hair stringy and in my eyes, I’ll feel like I’m stepping back across a threshold from the vast world inside. That’s when the self-consciousness comes on the strongest.

It is not a mystery why various churches put so much effort into suppressing dance. There is a physical freedom that lies within dance, when the kundalini energy burns up the spine, the feet fly off the floor, the waves of music ripple through the body. But there is also an emotional freedom, where messages become encapsulated in symbols, the body takes on animal forms to answer questions, the hands shape frameworks to delineate solutions. Of its own accord, the body speaks in a language both silent and profound.

It’s not something that can be forced. It’s something to be eased into, snuck up on, until suddenly, the spirit catches the wave of meaning, balancing in that delicate place of throbbing stillness. Dancing into ecstasy is part of it, but only part. There is a place beyond the ecstasy where the ugly dance really emerges. Where the ego has had its fill of the spoils of the dance and retires to its tent to digest. Where the body, warm and supple, has ceased its complaints.

I love dancing to ecstasy. Don’t get me wrong. But lately, I’ve been moved to find that place beyond ecstasy where there’s room for all the emotions, or better yet, where the emotions no longer matter, where the events unfold – adventures, romances, play – without a thought of what is going to happen next.

If I don’t know where my elbow is going to go, I can’t guarantee it’s not going to be akimbo. My elbow and I do have a deal that it’s not okay to hit someone. We’re both in agreement on that one. But other than that, I’d just a soon give it the freedom to steer. I spend so much of my life leaning on it, using it to prop myself up. When I let it dance, I’m surprised by what it has to say. It’s not the most graceful part of my body. But, ugly or not, sometimes it is the most eloquent.

— by Elaine Watt