The vitalness of unleashing woman and dance, uninhibited into society

Photo: Alistair H M Simmons

From a talk given at ‘After The Flood’, Brighton Spiegeltent, 2021. By Hayley J S Matthews, Dancer, Rolfer and leader of the pack at Sanctuary on the Fault Line

Good evening everyone, I’m Hayley J S Matthews, I am a contemporary dancer, a Rolfer and initiator and care taker of Sanctuary on the Fault Line, an establishing fugitive movement, to bring dance through womanhood, uninhibited, with professional women dancers dancing in the wild across the world.

I have called this talk the vitalness of unleashing woman and dance, uninhibited into society. Unleashing. Woman. And Dance. Into Society. And why this is vital.

I am going to be reading from my own writing. It might be nice to let the words cascade over you, with those that want to, taking a course through you, more like being in a waterfall together, than listening to a speech.  Feel free to lie down, rest your head, close your eyes, as you wish.

First I’m gonna map - what I mean by ‘woman’.  To help us here I’ll also attempt to describe my feeling of the space this ‘woman’ creates.

Then, how I feel that the dancer is beautifully placed to take up this space and make it potent. 

Then, what I mean by ‘dance’, and then what I mean by ‘uninhibited’. 

I’m gonna swim us in these topics, and paint some visions of what dance and woman unleashed  in society could do for us. 

Then I hope we will all have a clearer seeing of the power of woman and dancer in society, and maybe a few inklings or itches of how to unleash her or share in her power. 

It’s not an argument, it’s a swim, a dig, a reflection. 

What I mean by ‘woman’

When I say ‘woman’, I don't mean a woman, I mean an essence, the qualities and the roles of the anima in our lives. The anima is the name Jung gave to the female part of our psyche, that we all have, men and women, it has it’s drawbacks as a word to describe the feminine in all of us, but I use it here to touch on that established understanding that the feminine in all of us exists. This essence I use ‘anima’ to describe’ isn’t only something understood and unearthed by psycho-analysts, it rises in other cultures as sacred feminine, wild woman, wild mother. It has been embedded in myth and folklore for as long as we have been; characters like Oskar Matzerath and his waltz beat drum, Hathor the Goddess of dancers, musicians and death, Diana the Huntress, the life death life mother, the ancient female Nors trio Normir, Urdur, Verdandi who cut and wove the silent threads threads of life. 

Some words that could describe ‘woman’, as I mean it, this female force we all have might be -fluid, inexplicable, disruptive, eternal, life-bearing, disappearing, not bounded, courageous, respected, ungraspable, deep, daily life, unspoken, non-rational, erotic, strong, deadly, healing, non-linear, abundant, giving/taking, collaborative. Like nature she is bountiful, but has terms, if she is well. 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of Women Who Run with the Wolves) is super useful in deeply, broadly and whole-heartedly describing what this part of us does in and for our lives. She makes a useful and clarifying comparison between it and the ‘animus’, the male part of the psyche, that we all have - she says “Another way to understand this is to think of Wild Woman, as the artist and the animus as the arm of the artist. Wild Woman is the driver, the animus hustles up the vehicle. She makes the song, he scores it. She imagines, he offers advice...Without him the stage may be filled to bursting, but the curtains never part and the marquee remains dark...He defines the edges and establishes boundaries. You needn’t call him animus, call him by what words or images you like. But also understand that there is currently within women’s culture a suspicion of the masculine, for some a fear of ‘needing the masculine,’ for others, a painful recovery from being crushed by it in some way..” 

So anima and animus are part of a whole, and have a history. Clarissa really takes the whole book to describe anima or wild woman, so let me summarise, if we think of the role of this part of us in creative process - it is always the beginning, it is not able to be rationalised or reasoned, it is essence, feeling, soil, many cultures archetypes and myths have her entwined with nature itself. I also sense it in how Taoists describe the Tao - like an infant before it can smile, powerful because it does not know its power and does not grasp at it.

You can take a break here, to soak that up if you like.

So let me move to ‘the space of woman’ and how dancer’s are beautifully placed to take this up potently. By ‘space’ I mean our imagined potential for action. Not place, or geographical point. As a dancer myself, and working with many dancers collaboratively and in a health context in my Rolfing clinics I sense that the dancer has great potential to tend to the history of anima, and how it has perhaps been under-valued or suspended. I sense the dancer has great potential to land ‘woman’ where it should be. Let me talk a bit more about that…

I sense the space of woman, we might call it the phenomenology, the potent area her actions take up, is not at somewhere we might call surface, forefront, foreground, but that this may have been misunderstood, mis-expressed by the human family for some time. I also sense that healing this mis-understanding, which has caused injustice, confusion, exhaustion, exploitation, may not be to shift, with force or effort, the space of ‘woman’ to ‘surface’ or ‘foreground’ in the human family, which has been attempted by many movements. We could see ‘foreground’ as the political stage, the theatre stage, ownership, we could see it in teaching, philosophy, science, real estate, And I am not saying ‘woman’ does not or should not inhabit this space, she should, she should do as she wishes, that’s her true vibe. What I am suggesting is that if ‘woman’ this essence and way of being was to rise (and she does), to be heard, to lead in humanity, to spread, to be fully empowered, to seep to a space of potent action, to her very OWN space, that perhaps these spaces of action would not be the political stage, theatre or lecture room. Perhaps we can’t clearly see what they would be. I have a strong sense that this space would be different though, from these places. And that perhaps it is the wild, or at least, that we might find out there. And that just because it was not ‘surface’ or ‘forefront’, which we have come to value so much, that this would not mean that she would not be influential, powerful and capable, action, agency and making change. Maybe this space would be more ground up, more like water, perhaps it would operating in an emotional reality rather than one of reason or rationale, planning or scheduling. I think if she had great courage and support, this space of woman would have phenomenal influence and the upmost ability to move us all into our own compassionate space of action as a human family. 

I  move in dance in this re-womaning because dance is my gift and skill set. But perhaps also, and I have an inkling, an itch this is true, the dancer is beautifully placed and skilled to carve, inhabit and bring this space to action. Because the dancer must face fear, every time she dances, she must be seen and do the deep work on herself to allow herself to be seen truly (a life’s work). She is strong, she is unfathomably hard-working. She has passion. She is deeply experienced in living and moving in precariousness. She can defend herself but also fully own vulnerability. She speaks a language all humanity can understand, and not only understand but hear through heart rather than ears. She is adaptable, she can express herself clearly, even when she is terrified. Geez the yogic tradition even has her uniquely connected to the cosmos, while stepping on the gnome of ignorance. It is true that to inhabit this the dancer also has an immense amount of work to do, on herself and her ego, her attention and her self worth as well as with her body and skill. And this is daily, passionate, disciplined work. But I feel certain that if she has the right support, space and time for all this work (which not having becomes a common one of our inhibitors, and systemic realities make not having these things common-place), she can do it, and is also immensely humble. She knows then that her dance is not about her, and this part takes immense work and great strength, and matches ‘woman’ directly. There are not many paths to this humbleness and strong ego work that also require us to be so seen. And this is how the dancer is uniquely placed to bring the potency of woman into her own kind of subterranean forefront. 

You might like to take a break here too soak it up.

What I mean by dance (this is a short one, but good to clarify), here I mean dance as a professional act. I make this distinction to clarify and support a particular role in society, one that needs a lot of attention and dedication from those who do it, in the same way a flute player has the skills and craft to reach us through her flute. I mean a dedicated, life’s craft and work, which also needs Dancers who are willing to do the self development work. Not that non-professional dance doesn't have its power and place, we should all let that come through us whenever we sense it. But here I mean the ‘professional act’.

What I mean by ‘uninhibited’. I mean there is a need to re-member dance and dancer’s role in society. Not to call it to mind as it has been, but to re-member - put all the parts back together where they should be, re-honour, re-understand, re-spect, piece the pieces back together, because in many ways the power of dance has been dis-membered. 

Partly this re-membering would take us back to dance’s true value which we once knew innately, and now I think need the science of it’s value to remember it again, and I will come to that later. The other part is that we need to stop dis--membering dancers, and dancers themselves need to be able to prevent being dis-membered, stretched apart; we need to set our terms and own our craft, and build a ground to dance on; by which I mean a space where dance in all its strength and potential is truly possible, and not where precariousness take’s the potential from us .

So here is how we are dis-membering dancers - in some places the systems in and with which dance is made, in a valiant attempt to democratise funding so individuals can access it, have created scenarios where the path is only paved for those who can write some of the most complex funding forms that exist in the fundraising sector. And if this is achieved, are invited to a path where they are not dancers, they are dance factories, who include in one body and psyche the ability to dance, market, budget, sell, write copy, bid write, fundraise, make films, manage other artists, write contracts, do HR, evaluate and financially manage big budgets. And of the few that manage this ‘being factory’, many burn out. Because, well, of course they do. 

And, more than this (?!) the work that is managed to be made in this way, meets an oversaturated market and much of it doesn’t live on to tour or grow or pay the dancer’s bills. So dancers often end up not only eating their own tales and being afraid that they will not pay their next rent but also feeling unworthy, questioning our craft and not eating proper meals, and this is no ground to dance from.

Most dancers can never pay themselves enough to live, and when contracted don’t get enough to live either, and if full time contracted, usually have months of the year where they are not paid. And in other places where funding isn’t available, most dancers are on very low wages, if any wages at all. And this is no ground to dance from. Particularly given the attention great dancing demands of the dancer’s time and energy.

You could say this is part of being a dancer, it just has to be accepted. It’s a doggy dog world. You could say its a dancer’s choice. You could also say if you dangle a meal (replace equally with job or funding opportunity or low wage) in front of someone in a seriously precarious situation, of course they will reach for the meal. That is how it becomes abuse.

Perhaps instead the dancer is born a dancer, with a ferocious, generous thirst to serve society, and all this gets in their way, exhausts and abuses their gift. 

And even more than this. It means we do not feed dance as a human family, through the systems we agree to allow it to operate in. And this is where we all suffer. Because - this all shoots dance itself in the foot. And dance plays an integral role in the human family, it has great power to share and give lessons in lift, grace, possibility, strength, freedom, fluidity, abundance, an ability to defend, to be vulnerable. It plays an embodies, powerful didactic role in all these things. But because what we have are stressed, exhausted, precarious dancers (many of whom hide this stress and exhaustion with their strength and agility), who may entertain you, but cannot gift these deep human things, the power that seeps from dancer to you, subconsciously as you watch, from the background and beneath the surface is stress and exhaustion, because we read these things behind our thought and our reason, when we watch each other move, when we are with dance. So audiences have their stressed out lives reflected back at them, instead of a deep drink of grace, and this is where we are all missing out, from a reality where dance could be a deep part of the tapestry of human health. 

Because of these systems and contexts dance is made in ...the dancer’s anima get’s inhibited too….and so we all miss out again. Because, before we can have space for mystery, darkness, things that don’t yet make sense to rational mind, buds of new things, taking care, looking after, connecting, smelling, growing space in ourselves for the full spectrum of emotion, for new work to break through, messages from the flipside, from health, from emotional subterranea, grace, life-death-life,    we have to either do a million things or prove something, or ask for permission for this thing to live, that does not yet have any words with which to be proved. So anima is denied space. 

And dance doesn’t often grow to maturity. Or translate deep, powerful, anima, because it can’t be expressed when there is no ground accept precariousness and stress. Instead we move quickly to the action, the animus parts of us and the work, to survive, and animus is good and essential but not if it suffocates anima and operates alone. 

I’d definitely take a break here. But it’s the light s coming next, on how we can re-member dance and anima…

So how do we re-member? As I said earlier dancers need to set terms and boundaries in themselves and some dancers might need support to do that. And also connect to self-development and rich support and resist development that is really factory development. 

And perhaps we need to re-member via science - to recall what dance does for us as a human family, fortified by more recent understandings and findings, particularly because we rely so much on things being rational and proven these days, where animus has dominated so long, I think this is a good way for our modernised minds to re-member. So let’s do a bit of that. 

There are lots of areas of science that hold information on how dance performance nourishes us and is an essential part of human health, but for some reason we are not applying it much yet, we have got waylaid by the fitness models that tell us how participating in dance is good for us, which it is, but for some reason we have assigned dance performance into an entertainment category, which makes it hard to make cases for it and value it as a human family, we no longer understand the power watching dance has on our mental and emotional health, but dance is a huge part of this tapestry of human health. Neurology, the science of emotion, contemporary movement science, and what we are beginning to understand about the science of interdependence all point to how this is so.

So let’s re-member…

Our mirror neurons and how they work are big clues to what dance performance does for us. These are the parts of us that enable us to learn how to move, and are also the sites of empathy in the body/mind. They mean that as you move your arm, and I witness you, I don't move BUT the same neurons that fired in you to move your arm - fire in me. That’s why children end up moving in the same ways as their parents, and sometimes those ways don't show up until later, because they are deep holdings. And these mirror neurons go right through our lives working for us. So if you watch the grace and agility of a dancer, those neurological pathways are firing in you, and you are literally learning. It doesn’t mean of course that you get up from a performance and can dance like that dancer, but possibilities are opening, neurological pathways for emotion, movement and action. And living in societies, which are full of older people disorienting in old people’s homes, rather than growing into elders, as many of us do, you can imagine what truly experiencing length and grace could do for us? Length and grace uninhibited by stress, exhaustion and precariousness.

And consider this - it is not just my job as a dancer, and other dancer’s jobs to move impressively, it is our job to be able to feel, to feel everything, and express it, to feel emotions fully, and show you the channels for these emotions. So many people cannot feel or express rage or sorrow or joy even, it is our job to do that so you can, like the keening women of Ireland who’s job it is to feel and express grief for the whole community, because your self, and your mirror neurons experience it as you are with us, and you are shown the channel for grief, it opens in you. In your body and in your community. And that is one of the key roles of watching dance that is being inhibited.

This reality means that dance has a great role - and it is moving us through emotions that are too hard to feel alone, that’s why just at the moment that things get almost too much, too much grief or too much joy, for the soloist, the chorus arrives, and the dancers and audience move through something that was to difficult to move through alone, and a channel of resilience for and in our own lives, opens. 

And because dance can be so unpredictable - its not a walk or a golf swing or a racing car race, you never know what the dancer will do next, the movement is creative, it also plays the role of building embodied and very real resilience in the audience. Because our mirror neurons have another job, and that is to tell us if there is danger. They have watched animals move in the forest or cars in the city and know which movements should tell us to flee, get out the way or call for help, and which not to worry about. And to watch a dancer almost fall but catch herself, leap and land and be OK, this teaches our system all kinds of resilience, courage and agility. It's a lesson in freedom, in courage, learnt by your body through your mirror neurons, as you watch dance. 

So dance performance becomes a joyful, exciting, moving lesson in how to feel and how to live, in resilience, grace and courage, and grows in us huge emotional resilience in being together in moving through emotional territory that is impossible to process or move through alone on our own. With dance fully, healthily, uninhibited in the world I am sure there would be way fewer therapist couches.

But, the dancer needs to be immensely well for this to be the case.  Because this work is a huge undertaking, not just the work but to take on this role. And she cannot give us these gifts if she is living precariously or exhaustively, and doesn’t have space herself for all emotion, which is impossible when we are stressed or exhausted. 

There is more science, we could talk about how uniqueness is expressed and taught by dancers, particularly if dancers learn how to be in our unique anti-gravitational system that means we rise. But this is not a perfect talk, and I think we have covered enough to start this agent, womanly, dancing ball rolling. And this is the work we continue in the newly establishing movement called Sanctuary on the Fault Line, you are welcome to read and come and experience more there.

Hopefully we now have a grounding to understand and articulate that we need to take great care of dancers, so they can be our care takers, our powerful, irreplaceable governesses and teachers of grace, resilience, courage, health and feeling. 

Thank you. 

Hayley

More about Hayley Matthews here