Dancing to Ecstasy

We were on the Stanford campus, in a small room that used to be a nursery school classroom. Most of the people standing around were friends of the band or friends of friends. The female lead singer sang in Turkish but even if I understood Turkish, I doubt I could have made out the lyrics over the boy band’s driving rock beat. From the first chords, my body was in motion. After all, what else is live music, especially live rock and roll, for but to dance to? I looked around at the other people in the room, most of them a decade or two younger than me, as they stood, some swaying to the beat, others stock still. A few took pictures. It was as though they were watching a symphony concert or a televised event.

I had a sense of déjà vu to the Death Cab for Cutie concert I had attended a couple of summers earlier at the outdoor Greek Theatre in Berkeley. There, the number of people over 40 totaled about six, and I was perhaps the only one who wasn’t escorting a gaggle of teenaged children. The crowd was enthusiastic, cheering wildly after each song, singing along with some, but they seemed locked in their heads, or locked out of their bodies. I simply couldn’t fathom how they could just stand there so passively, with only the slightest movement. Were they all so afraid of being noticed? Of doing something other than what the rest of their peers were doing?

It reminded me of another concert I’d gone to a decade earlier in Boston. Roxette, a Swedish rock band, was performing in a small downtown theatre. Most of the audience, including my then-husband and I, were sitting in our seats, tapping our feet or moving our shoulders. Finally, the female singer, Marie Fredericksson, her voice admitting a tiniest bit of frustration, called out to the audience, “Do you wanna dance?” “Yes,” they responded. “Well then you have to stand up and move,” she said, giving us permission to stand in the narrow aisle and dance.

One definite advantage of being older is that I, for one, no longer care what the anonymous “they” think about me. If I want to dance, then I’m going to dance. I’ve always loved dancing, but when I was younger I was too self-conscious, too afraid of other people’s opinions to move to the music, especially without a partner. My husband was even more self-conscious, so for years, I sat on the sidelines, tapping my feet, wishing that I could move body and soul to the beat.

No wonder I felt as though I’d come home the very first time I attended a 5Rhythms class three years ago. I didn’t have to wait for someone to ask me to dance, didn't have to dance with anyone, although I could if we both wanted to. It was just me and the music, but it was also me moving in community. A community of like-minded souls. Finally, I had found my tribe, the dance tribe. Whenever I join a 5 Rhythms class, whether my weekly local or a workshop or a class in another city, in fact, whenever I attend any kind of free-form ecstatic dance class, be it contact improvisation or Soul Motion or Biodanza, I have that sense of connecting with my tribe, that sense of coming home.

But the practice of ecstatic dance was brought me far more than community. It has helped me to know myself on a deeper level, to connect with my emotions and let them flow through me with the movement and the music. Not only have I experienced deep connection with one person and with a whole roomful of people, I have healed deep pain, released deep grief and rage, and expressed deep joy. I have found a level of energy, vitality and stamina that belie my age, that I simply didn’t possess when I was young. And so tonight, when the band started playing, I dropped into my center, let go of any self-consciousness or fears of being judged, and moved to the music, blissfully riding the waves of sound to ecstasy.

The Thrill of the Pole

The Thrill of the Pole

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the idea that New Burlesque—or any other form of public striptease-- could be empowering for women. But my daughter is a passionate proponent of this art form, so when she suggested we catch a show at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce in Los Angeles, I was curious to see what she found so fascinating.

My image of burlesque was beautiful young women doing dance routines while removing gorgeous sequined costumes. So when a lovely young woman came out on stage in a royal blue long-sleeved sequined top and matching ankle-length skirt, slit up the front to reveal a provocative bit of gold fringe, my expectations were met. What surprised me was the playfulness of her routine and the fact that even after she’d stripped down, she was still as covered up as if she were on a local beach.

At first, I was impressed simply because she could prance around the narrow bar in 6-inch heels. But as the show continued, I was even more taken with her agility and strength, especially when she hung upside down from the ropes. By this point, she was in a glittery pastie bra and white bikini bottom with a fringe “tail,” which bobbed up and down as she moved to the beat of the drum. I could never have done that, not even when I was 18 years old. The audience was entranced, but most importantly, the dancer herself seemed to be having a very good time.

The next day, I had the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the art of the striptease with an introductory class at the S-Factor in Los Angeles. That’s “S” as in stripper. As it happened, I was one of the oldest women in this class, and probably the least fit. To my relief, the room was dimly lit with no mirrors. The instructor explained that the absence of mirrors was meant to encourage us to focus on feeling good in our own skin, rather than on how we might look to others.

We arranged our mats on the floor in an oval around the three shiny poles in the center of the room and introduced ourselves. As we followed the teacher and her assistant through the strenuous workout targeting hips, buttocks, legs and abs, they encouraged us to play with our own hair, touch our faces, stroke our legs. Some of the exercises were variations on yoga postures, like hip circles combined with the bridge pose or cat and cow with a circling torso motion, but rather than holding the position, we moved through it in slow-motion, which added to the challenge.

The 45-minute or so workout ended with learning the S-Walk, a languid movement of crossed legs and dragging toes, perfect for approaching the pole. For our first pole trick, we held on with both hands, hooked one ankle around it, picked up the other foot and spun down. “No firemen!,” the instructor admonished, explaining that we were not to hug the pole tightly but to maintain a certain distance. It looked simple, but while the other women seemed to catch on quickly, I could not get my back foot off the floor, which meant that I was painfully pulling my wrists down the pole on each attempt. Finally, near the end of the class, my persistence paid off and I was able to mount and spin around the pole. My classmates applauded. Once I figured out how to spin, I didn’t want to stop. Even as the class drew to a close, I was sneaking in a couple of extra spins and wondering where I could get a pole of my own.

Although I learned how to mount the pole, spin down it, and dismount with cocked-hip first, I didn’t particularly feel like a stripper-in-training. Instead, I felt like a thrilled 10-year-old who has finally learned to do a cartwheel and can’t wait to show it off, which I did as soon as my daughter arrived to pick me up at the end of class.

Empowerment takes many forms.