Edit draft post about dance for pragmatists

src/posts/_drafts/dance-for-pragmatists.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+title: If you can move, if you have anything at all to say to the world, you can dance
+date: 2024-06-19T10:10:10
+author: Jenny Fung
+tags:
+ - Dance
+ - Movement
+ - Communication
+---
+When I was 11 years old, I discovered I loved dancing on the dance floor of a family wedding. I lost myself in the crowd, moving with an energy outside myself stirring up energy within myself. At the end of the night, I looked forward to the next wedding. I didn't think much of this feeling.
+
+In high school, I discovered choreography by learning Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in the privacy of my bedroom. I taught it to friends at summer camp. I felt power that others were willed to move to my movements. I felt a high dancing in sync as a group. I continued to explore this interest via a KPop dance group during my 4 years of college.
+
+In my mind, I separated dancing from "my life". It was a fun activity, self-contained for parties or performances. Then there was professional dancing like *the ballet*, which felt very distant, as an elite sport.
+
+Dance is popularly considered an art, in that it has an entry fee of talent + skill. Dance can be talked about in an artsy highfalutin way or in bohemian language such that it feels removed behind class and identity walls, off-putting to one who feels an outsider to them. Often it is talked about boringly. Seriously, museum plaques or program booklets can bore a person to death. Yet, put them in front of a BalletX performance with no context, and they may be moved to tears (I certainly have). To quote a wise lemur: "You don't have to know to like" (ref: Madagascar, the movie). The truth is, without words, you _do know_: just on other levels of your nervous system (brain and body).
+
+The brain and all its nerves extend throughout the body. It is said we have 3 nervous systems: the brain (CNS), the body's (PNS) and the bacteria in our gut. That's a lot of parties with something to say! And their instrument is and can only be the body.
+
+What I've come to learn about the arts is that they do not need explanation to be appreciated. Two people who speak different languages entirely may watch the same dance and feel the same way about it. It is fine to read a poem and not understand each word, but walk away with just an image or feeling. One can hear a song in a foreign language and still get the vibe. Verbal explanations can attempt to communicate understanding, but explanations can only ever be incomplete. With these brains and bodies of ours, humans have many senses operating at the same time and valid, unconscious ways of knowing.
+
+Forget what you think and know about dance, dancing. Dance is unfortunately such a loaded idea these days. A common knee-jerk reaction to dance is to reject it. *I can't dance* they'll say. *I'm not drunk enough*. The cultural norm thinks *dance must look a certain way, be professional, or aesthetically beautiful*. Forget about that.
+
+We move all the time. We walk. We chop vegetables. Sometimes that movement mixes with expression. We tap our feet to music. We feel so much for someone, we want to hug them tightly. Sometimes something is so fluffy, we want to shake it violently (ref: Despicable Me, the movie). Our bodies can move and can want to speak through movement. It is from this place, a place of physical impulse, of wanting to say something in a movement, that dance comes from. It is subconscious. Everyone has this place inside them. I believe everyone does dance and can dance. We each have the capacity to express outwardly by moving our body in some way.
+
+Dance can be the flick of a wrist. It can be all your limbs shaking wildly. It can be a two-step. It can even be standing completely still. But that flick of the wrist is not necessarily dancing, unless it is. What willed you to move? From where you did the directive to move come from? From the place of physical impulse: what does it want to say, and how is going to say it through the body?
+
+
+<!--more-->
+
+
+I lack formal dance education, but have come to know my body as enjoying to move. I like to wiggle and weave through crowded sidewalks, I like to exercise and recreational sports, and I like to tear up a wedding dance floor. I think all bodies must like to move; it is what they were built to do, with every fiber of muscle and nerve ending.