How long until you can dance like you?

A common question people ask is "how long until I can dance like you." I can't teach you to dance like me because my dancing is me. But I can guide you towards dancing like you. And with each step you take with more confidence, the more your personality will permeate through the everyday mask you wear. The more fun you have with the movements, the more teasing and playful you allow yourself to be, the more your personality will come out to play. And the more you look internally, the more inspiration you will find bubbling up to be expressed. My Sufi teacher used to talk about expansion and contraction, going into the self and then in performance, protraying all that you have found. Like a treasure hunt, you have to find the gold first before you can tell people of its astonishing beauty. This is the hidden side, it is a part that some people are interested in and others are not.

Technique is the structure on which all this hangs, its is the safe framework, the pole around which we swing. I find I have signature moves for certain moods, I turn a lot when I'm angry, I do figure 8's when I'm lost, camels if i feel I need to impress more. But when I am turning with the veil, or immersed in the slow music of the flute or the violin I simply follow the next impulse, my body leads me, using moves i already know and some i don't, my mind is quiet. And this is what some people call being in the moment - I am not planning the next movement, nor influenced by the previous one.

Improvisation is self-gratifying but the opposite, choreography, has the advantage of order and repetition as well as a clear connection to the music it has been written for. Not only that - it is a repeatable, teachable experience. I used to hate choreography. The first show I did I tried to hide and dropped out of the dress rehearsal, when both of these failed I sat stony faced on the stage, aghast at the need for me to contain the limitlessness of the improvisational dance into a simplified right-left-right combination. But strangely, to me, the audience enjoyed it, and I learned that this was another aspect of the dance, a discipline. That people moving together, synchronised to each other and the music can be satisfying and beautiful. In the same way as a friend once told me drummers have to divide their minds into sections to focus on each aspect of the rhythm, so I had to separate my mind for technique and yet pour in the enjoyment and flow from the freer, more nomadic side, taking it to a different place each time.

It takes a while to be able to dance a choreography and emote at the same time. It takes a lot of practice, until you are so secure with it you no longer need to think, like - and I hate the overused metaphor - driving a car, at this point you can really trust your body - you muscle memory - and your mind is free to enjoy the experience. It is satisfying to allow the body to take control and it takes trust. Trust that the mind doesn't need to filter everything first. That the movements can be absorbed by the body, that the feeling can be transmitted straight from your heart without interpretation. Because after all this is what dance is. If we wanted to sit down and explain something we would. What we want is to reveal something of ourselves, to talk in a deeper, simpler language, to be witnessed, to be seen for who we really are, to be understood, to touch people.

My teacher never spoke while he was teaching. He would just smile a cheeky little smile and demonstrate the movements. The advantage of this was that I got to discover my own way, to figure out the dance for myself. The disadvantage was I never got to map my body clearly, to feel precisely what muscle was moving what. And this was eventually what liberated me. So technique is now my refuge and improvisation is my journey, when I need to go travelling away from familiar shores I take the audience with me.

"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
- Rumi