When I think of creativity, I rarely have thought of dancing, sadly. Mostly because I’ve seen so few professional, on-stage dance performances. And because in my early twenties I quit salsa dancing after my surgery-riddled feet couldn’t keep up with the people who danced (and were good) week-in and week-out. Dancing felt more like a chore, and an activity I couldn’t quite access. I didn’t think I belonged on the dance floor.
Dancing, though, when I think about it, is beyond accessible. If you can move, you can dance. You don’t need training, stages, or even legs. Music may be the only requirement, and that’s even debatable.
It also made me think of how my relationship to dance is a larger relationship to creativity in general. When I write something there is often a small critic in my head saying, “No one will read this” and “This won’t sell.” In other words, there’s no point. But the point, really, is that creating something isn’t always about how something will sell, or how it will be received. A creation — including dance — can be ephemeral and have a special relationship with the moment for when it happens.
You can be messy and uncoordinated in dance. Just like you can in other forms of arts. You don’t need to be a ballet dancer or born with an anatomical wonder to shake the booty to a song. You just need allowance to let go and throw your self into the moment.
Have you been in such a space? One moment you’re a scattered, stressed mess of haywire in a club or bar or some room with music for some reasons you can’t quite dig out of the sand of your mind. Then it comes on. The song. Mariah. Whitney. Burna Boy. Robyn. Brooks & Dunn. Pick your flavor.
Every fiber on your skin changes. It’s like sunshine in early June: chemicals release and a transformation commences. You slip onto the dance floor and let loose. Your whole body is drenched in the moment and there’s no other place you’d rather be. I’ve experienced this many times, alone, and in a crowd of strangers, or among friends. I’ll never forget the firecracker set of dancing moments at my wedding. There’s a certain electricity, gushing endorphins and joy that spring from these moments. It feels a little bit like making something. Kicking into high gear flow with a paragraph, a drawing, where time melts into the night, your limbs, and you’re throttled. Something shakes loose in your brain. Fog rips away, gunk blows to ash.
Dance, like many forms of creating, is an old human activity. And like all old activities to the human species, it’s a biological need. Dancing is linked to good brain health, a mood booster, and has even been a treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
For me, dancing — creating something with my body — isn’t for anything else than to serve that biological need. Rarely do any of my creations garner big-time attention, and dancing reminds me that the act of creating isn’t always about garnering big-time attention. Yet, it makes me feel good when I am finished. Not unlike having attention and praise (if not better than). That mindset seeps into other parts of my creativity.
At the minimum, my style of dance of just moving without rules or templates, purely recreational, is a different way to look at creativity. Creating can be for an audience and a market, but sometimes it’s just about the way it makes you feel.
So, below are a collection of videos that inspire the everydayness of dance. To me at least. Some from my past, others more recently. Mostly scenes from films and a couple music videos that spark that feeling to move.
Pose (2018): Because this is such a critical moment in this episode, and because Damon’s character dances to the best song in the world to dance to, Whitney Houston’s “I want to dance with somebody,” it felt like a must. The song alone makes me want to shake my spine and pelvis, but couple that with the emotional stakes of the show? Boom. It has zipline effect on my nerves.
Call me by your Name (2017), which introduced me to “Love my way” by the Psychedelic Furs, captures desire and all the stuff you can say on a dance floor without saying a word.
Invisible (2007). Few folks probably remember this supernatural, teen movie, but I saw it in theaters and the dance scene at the disco, where the character Annie takes the dance floor still lived with me all these years later. Annie can hear a ghost version of Nick who is having an “out of body experience.” Nick is enlisting her help trying to find his body (he’s still alive.) She’s a thief and struggling to make ends meet. In the scene, she settles for less money than she wanted or needs. The character seems wound up like a tight fist. But when she reaches the dance floor of the club where she is conducting business, she slips into anonymity and lets it all go. She’s among lights and the dancing strangers (besides Nick, who is ghostly bouncing around), sauced in music. At the time, it left a mark on me — a teen who had never been to such a place, but wanted to be there. It was nutrition for my imagination. It felt like Annie went to a place where she didn’t need to be her for a while, or deal with all the pressure and pain her body and circumstance brought to her. It’s perhaps giving too much credit to this film, but that’s what I got out of it.
Fire Island (2022). To keep the theme of night club, Noah and Will have a moment on Fire Island, a Queer re-telling of Pride & Prejudice. This is about two people trying hard to avoid each other, but a dance floor brings them together, intimacy grows. Nudged together under the chime of Sofi Tukker’s Fantasy.
Here’s a list within a list. Top 10 dance scenes from the first two Magic Mike movies. In honor of course of the newest installment that just came out Magic Mike Last Dance. These films do some interesting things with masculinity and dance, so that’s why it’s here.
When Harry danced with Hermione in Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010). In story of so much pain and for a person who has lost so much (Harry) on a perilous journey, this part of the film brought a relief like a dose of Ibuprofen.
Special consideration to Matrix Reloaded (2003), especially those who fear AI’s eventual doomsday takeover. There’s not a good clip online of this scene, but it exists as iconic in my imagination. Morpheus gives a speech before the last human city of Zion and tells the crowd on this night they should shake the walls, make the evil machines hear that they are still there. Let the machines shutter in their circuits. It’s a large crowd of movement, feet, drums, loose clothing, sweat and skin. It’s burning man meets Wachowski sister dreamscape. It is everything you need to dance and rage against the machine.
St. Lucia’s “Touch.” This video is medicine, go ahead and watch and try not to dance.
Same could be said for Kiesza’s “Hideaway.”
Can’t end this list without Dirty Dancing (1987). I don’t think I need to say more than that.
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Shoutouts & Blurbs
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Oh wow, did this speak to me Tucker! Of course, I never thought about describing the feeling, but you brought out exactly what the music/dancing urge does! You are awesome 🥰 I love you, Tori