Dance Like Nobody's Watching

Being brought up in a family of actors, I started to perform in theatres at the tender age of 6. Apart from school, the memories I have as a child were all about singing, dancing and acting. Everything I did was about performing for an audience. I loved it. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything else. I have a natural built-in mechanism for having an “audience” and so I was always very well behaved. I never truly “let go” or was “just a kid”.

So to dance like nobody’s watching is just NOT in my DNA.

Now fast forward 20+ years later when I started to grow a passion for a form of Latin dance called Zouk. The contemporary version of Zouk is very fluid; it is a partner dance, but the depth lies in the partner connection, musical interpretation and improvisation. A couple years ago, I was at a teacher training and I was asked to feel the music, to use my body movement as the language of my expressions and to do THAT THING – to dance like nobody’s watching.

Of course I didn’t do that. I gave all my natural triple turns and an occasional jump kick or split. Then I noticed something strange. Those who gave their soul to the music possessed a different energy. Some dancers were of course quite advanced, but even those who weren’t had an attraction hard to explain. I didn’t posses that energy or attraction, I was technically competent but that was all I had.

This uncomfortable feeling from the class eventually led me to look up the definition of Dance. The most appealing definition actually comes from Wikipedia: “Dance is the art of movement of the body“. Right then and there, I understood. What the other dancers were doing was to allow Art to come through their body and simply be the channel of such inspirations.

What I did was an Act. An act of physical competency.

In order to become part of the art form, I had to learn to let go and get my ego out of the way.

This understanding shredded much light on so many other subjects. You may have heard of this line from numerous prayers: “Use me as an instrument of thy peace“. Every job, relationship or given situation is a divine opportunity for us to be that instrument or channel of peace. We are merely a conduit of love and inspiration.

We must certainly sharpen our mind, strengthen our body or gain the skills to be a perfect instrument for our purpose, but the bottom line is not about Doing-it-all, it is about Being in our most conscious state of mind, allowing the inspiration to come, and the opportunity to mature.

And that very day to be asked to dance like nobody’s watching was faithfully my opportunity to grow wiser and truer to my soul.