Pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2010 by Dr. Peter Lovatt in Dance Psy­chol­ogy.
Check his work on http://dancedrdance.com

“I got the music in me.”

You don’t need bits of fancy sci­en­tific kit, a psychiatrist’s couch or a brain scan­ner to get to the heart of basic human nature, all you have to do is to ask one sim­ple ques­tion, stand back, and wait for the “whoosh” as the flood gates open. I asked peo­ple what I thought was a sim­ple ques­tion, “Why do you dance?” and the responses I received were over-whelming in their sen­si­tiv­ity and hon­esty. They were beau­ti­ful, heart-breaking, sur­pris­ing and funny.

Hun­dreds of men and women from 13 to 77 told me why they dance, or why they don’t. Peo­ple told me that they dance because it makes them feel sexy, or that their girl­friend makes them dance, or they dance to get in touch with their body. Some peo­ple told me that they only dance when they are on their own, and for them dance is a secret guilty plea­sure that nobody else knows about. For a large num­ber of peo­ple music played a cen­tral role in their rea­sons for dancing.

For some danc­ing is not only a nat­ural response to music, they report feel­ing com­pelled to move when they hear cer­tain music or rhythms and they tell me that the act of danc­ing con­nects them with the music in a com­pletely unique way. Peo­ple have told me that when they hear cer­tain songs they have to move and dance, and this act of danc­ing helps them make sense of the music. This feel­ing, and com­pul­sion to dance, is so strong that, as one man wrote, “When I dance I become part of the music and the music becomes part of me”.

When peo­ple con­nect with music through danc­ing it can affect their body, their thoughts and their mind. A woman wrote that she loves to move around and feel the music flow through her and another women wrote that she feels enveloped by the music, writ­ing that danc­ing makes her feel as though she is “inside” the music. Indeed, there are many exam­ples of peo­ple being moved by the music. One shy young man wrote that he dances because the power of music gives him wings to fly away from every­day life. For him the com­bi­na­tion of dance and music facil­i­tated an escape, the kind of escape that other peo­ple have expe­ri­enced, such that when they dance to cer­tain rhythms they go into a trance-like state. But, of course, we don’t always dance alone and the con­nec­tion between dance and music can also enhance the con­nec­tion between dancers. A 39 year old woman wrote, “I love the addi­tional sense of con­nec­tion to the music that I get from danc­ing close with another per­son. There’s a real sense of being able to hear the music the way that other per­son hears it – and to share how I hear the music with them.”

There are many rea­sons why peo­ple dance and there are lots of rea­sons why peo­ple don’t dance. In my next blog entry I’ll out­line the rea­sons peo­ple give for not danc­ing. If you would like to tell me why you dance, or don’t dance, please go to my web­site: www.dancedrdance.com and click on the big yel­low square. You can write as much, or as lit­tle, as you like. No need for a brain scanner.