Recently, I’ve been contemplating the value of dance beyond just learning the steps. Dance, as most of us know is a performing art - a way to celebrate, a form of exercise, and a way to build community. However, I want to investigate how dance can bring healing even in the midst of grief. After the year I’ve had of multiple miscarriages and struggling to make sense of it all. I’ve leaned into my love for dance and dance-making to cope with some of the painful emotions that have accompanied these losses.
Before we go any further, I’d like to bring context to what it means to mourn. The act of mourning means to feel or show deep sorrow or regret for someone or their death. And if you haven’t mourned a loved one yet, you will at some point in your life. Death is a human experience, one we all share.
Once I discovered I was loosing my second child, I began to search out ways to heal. In all honesty, my coping mechanisms after the first miscarriage were unhealthy and only kept me in bondage. And my husband was very helpful in showing me that there were more positive ways I could express my grief. (Shout out to the love of my life!) When you are ready - expressing your emotions, thoughts and feelings can be extremely cathartic. Whether it be through journaling, singing, dancing, or outwardly expressing your pain: each can be so valuable in the recovery process.
In our pain we look for ways to cope.
I have a friend who told me when she was at her lowest point of grief, she would just "dance it out" because she couldn't find any other way to express herself. She also said, "There were days where I would dance in the dark and somehow that felt more healing than other times. I wanted to express as much as I could without words."
For my own recovery, I started exploring my love of dance as a way to process. I began playing with the feature in Instagram called Reels. Basically it's Instagrams version of Tik Tok. I started creating 15 to 30 seconds of choreography, adding music and posting it on my instagram page @Dance4everysole. One video clip after another I began to enjoy the process of improvising, creating and producing the Reels. And an added benefit was the feedback I got from my social media followers. I began to feel like myself again: inspired, joyful and most of all hopeful.
I have been researching why dance making seems to be helping in my grief journey. This is what I’ve found:
“Loss and creativity are two essential parts of the human experience. When we experience loss personally, creativity might just be the best way out.” Dr. Shelley Carson a lecturer at Harvard University. “Expressive creativity” can use negative energy and channel it into creative work as a means to assist with loss or trauma.Clinical psychologist Henry Seiden, Ph.D., echoes Carson in his assessment: “Creativity is the essential response to grief.”
Now I am in the process of planning a longer piece that will express my experience with grief. Another goal I’m working towards is developing a workshop for other women who like myself have experienced loss. Currently I am brainstorming ways to invite the expression of our pain through movement. The tribe I am a part of now is not one I would have chosen, but I am going to try my best to be a light in an otherwise dark circumstance. I’m going to keep making dances to help with the trauma of losing my children and I’m working on building a movement workshop for mothers who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss.
I wonder now about the iconic dance Martha Graham created in 1930 called Lamentation. In the dance Martha demonstrates a rocking movement and the anguish of mourning. She rises only once from a seated position and her movements produce a profound image of distraught motherhood. After experiencing my own loss as a mother, I can't help but wonder if Martha experienced something similar?
Martha Graham in Lamentation
There are many cultures that use dance to honor the death of a loved one. Below are a list of a few communities that pay tribute through the art form of dance.
In Prampram, Ghana there is a group led by Benjamin Aidoo called The Dancing Pallbearers. “They dress in ornate tuxedos, big sunglasses and spotless white gloves and while lifting the coffin onto their shoulders they bounce in unison, wave white handkerchiefs and even crawl across the floor while keeping the deceased safely in the air.” (https://www.okayafrica.com)
In the country of New Zealand, the Haka dance is performed at celebrations as well as at funerals. It is performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment.
In the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, the second line is a funeral parade of music and dancing. The Second Line is a traditional dance in which participants dance and walk along in an African-based, free-form style with parasols and handkerchiefs.
The Haka
The healing process takes time and really, there is no expiration date to someones grief journey.Through this process, I have realized that mourning and dancing can happen simultaneously. In your deepest pain dancing can bring a release of deep emotions. I believe dance has POWER in healing the body and soul!
Ecclesiastes 3:4 There is a time to weep and a time to laugh. And as Kevin Bacon puts it in Footloose, “THERE IS A TIME TO DANCE.”
Photography by Marcie Jane Photography @mjp_beautyandboudoir
Additional Reference: Stages of Grief: Choreography by Jasmine Dorris
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