—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nova loves to dance with family members, with Dada as acrobats, with Mama with grace, with Nana (me) untamed.

Nova also likes to watch dancers on YouTube and make up stories about them. From my collection of African dancers, Nova and I select what she calls "funny dance videos." Women and men of all shapes and sizes and mixes of race1 perform both in harmony and in their own style.

In one video, Nova labels dancers as members of her family, one as her mother “Bria,” one as her father “Jimmy,” and one as her brother “Raiden.”

While we watch, Nova doesn’t distinguish race or gender. Unrestrained with convention, tiny Nova took on the identity of an athletic and graceful dark-skinned man, as “me when I’m bigger.”

Her selection of her Bria, her Jimmy and her Raiden among the dancers align with her vision. “Bria” is beautiful, energetic, and graceful. “Jimmy” is handsome and athletic. And “Raiden” is the coolest, a man who dances and sings.

The “that’s me when I’m bigger” dancer interacts with the land beneath him, falling back on his hands, rolling, kicking his feet out, leaping to stand. Nova attempts similar moves. It’s easy to miss in an active toddler, but I’ll recognize a spin, jump and fall, roll onto her back, and attempt to jump to standing. I comment on her “that’s me when I’m bigger” dance, and Nova rewards me with her toothy grin.

In a feat of imagination, Nova has identified her Grandbear as one of the dancers. Gary finds this silly because he thinks he’s a terrible dancer. (I disagree) So far, perhaps because the granny-aged only smile and wiggle, there’s no "Nana" in these dance troupes. None dance the way Nova and I do.

In the videos, Nova recognizes movements she created to tell stories, such as lift up, the “twisty”, and “the crab” her “Jimmy” taught her, and the “quick step” Nova herself named early on. As we watch, Nova sits on my lap and wiggles the twisty, lifts her arms up, quick steps her legs and feet, and mimics the arm and hand movements of the dancers. Nova is surprisingly accurate in moving as they move yet makes it her own.

Since I started writing this article, Nova identified two women in another favorite video as her “Jimmy” and as her “Raiden” and a slender man as her “Bria.” I wasn’t surprised.

What fun it is to enjoy a peekaboo view of movement through Nova’s eyes.

When our kids were done with T-ball and Little League, he also wanted an exercise for our children. Gary had wanted to train in Aikido since before we were married and decided this was the time. As it turned out, he meant the time for all four of us. He found a dojo and Gary, I, and ten-year-old Adam and six-year-old Bria started our six and a half-year journey, attending evening classes between two and four times a week.

In my mid-forties, shoulder rolls, a staple of training, were a challenge, as was fending off attacking fellow students—randori!–who were bent on proving their skills by sending shooting pains up my hand to my elbow before throwing me. (In fairness that was only one guy.) Our kids loved the training, made friends, and we found a community.

Aikido is a graceful martial art. I loved watching the children train and test. I loved watching and participating in training as well. I viewed the movements as a dance of “getting out of the way” (the first rule of Aikido) to counter an attack and then maneuver to throw your attacker.

Over the years, we earned our brown belts, the last step before preparing for our black belt tests. When I envisioned my future black belt test, my husband would be my partner (the one I’d throw), and I choreographed an Aikido “dance” to feature my/our skills.

As with most of my dance fantasies, that one was never realized. Our wonderful senseis moved to Mexico, where life was cheaper, to start a dojo. (There's little money in ethical teaching of martial arts.) The sensei who took over our dojo had a full-time job and a family and eventually realized he didn’t have the time to commit to a second job.

The community spirit dissolved (no more barbecues) and the dojo closed. We never tested for black belts. Bummer. That would have been fun to have under our belts, so to speak. And think of the lost bragging rights!

A year after the close of our Aikido dojo, Gary enrolled in karate with the kids, and I stayed at home to dance. Soon, Adam went off to college, but Bria continued at the karate dojo for over a decade.

Gary had moved on to his next martial art, Tai Chi. He drove to class in Seattle for a couple of years until we lucked out and found a class in Edmonds with a skilled and patient teacher.

Learning the Tai Chi Chen form has been one of the best movement experiences of my life and serves me well as I age. Tai Chi is beautiful to watch and practice. I love the way I feel as my feet move along the space beneath me, and my knees, hips, chest, elbows, hands, and head follow. It is a martial dance you can do daily for yourself. The movements are graceful, fluid and comforting. The deep breathing is meditative. I can focus on each part of my body as I reach, settle, swing, push, punch, balance, release. Relax.

I have to thank my husband for being so, um... pushy. I have experienced the Chen form and Tai Chi as yet another wonderful dance.

Soon after we moved to Portland, I witnessed a young woman, donning a headset, eyes shut, dancing alone. She moved without care to who might be watching. She danced in her own world, lacking selfconsciousness.

When she took a break, I approached her and complimented her dancing. She explained her practice as ecstatic dance, and told me of an ecstatic dance group that met every Sunday at another park.

Before Covid turned us into shut-ins, Gary and I went to local bars to dance. My husband danced with only me, but when his enthusiasm waned, was fine with me dancing with other men and women.

As the ecstatic dance event took place in the open air of a park, I could  dance with others again. Gary would sit out but agreed to accompany me to the next Sunday event for this new dance experience.

My fantasy was that everyone there would love dancing as much as I do. Movement would override selfconscious thoughts, and participants would surrender to the experience. Some would try moves they saw others doing so they could experiment with the joy of moving in new ways. Some would move in unison to the rhythm of the music and to the rhythm of fellow dancers.

To my surprise, there were lots of rules for the dozens of us grown adults. Detailed instructions were given on how to be free and ecstatic. The leader's jargon was a retreat to the hippie era. Been there, done that.

After warming up for an interminable time, the participants were told to hold hands in a circle. The leader laid down the rules: no talking; this is how you approach a prospective partner; barefoot dancing encouraged; the flow of the music chosen and why. Finally, the DJ was introduced.

It was a large venue in a large park. However, unless you chose to carefully weave between dancers, it was best to define your movement space.

One participant defined her space with a king-sized blanket and perimeter within which none were to intrude. She chastised parents who allowed their children near her claimed space. Other “dancers” hung from rings on straps attached to park trees, swinging as they performed elaborate acrobatics. A few women danced topless. Off-leash dogs roamed freely throughout the group, and more than once, I almost fell over a dog that paused behind me.

All of this was in stark contrast to my expectations of ecstatic dance. Rather than unselfconscious and meditative movement, I witnessed performance and posturing. Most of these "ecstatic” dancers weren’t people to dance with, they were people to dance among.

It wasn't all disappointment. I observed  parents with their uninhibited children. The youngest children were the shining stars because they danced without knowing they were stars. I saw the occasional dancer who wasn't putting on a show. It was delightful when someone visiting the park happened upon the group and joined in. They missed the rules ceremony so they innocently broke them. They clearly just loved to dance.

My dance fantasies have formed through years of dancing with others and dancing alone. The memories that inform my fantasies include dancing with high-school friends, with fellow students at college, with allies during my stint in local politics, with my husband and my children, and dancing as a child.

As meditation is letting go of thought to be present in the moment, ecstatic dance is letting go of pretense to be present in your body. I have yet to experience that with strangers.

I had never thought of that, but the cognitive psychologist Ellen Langer (the first tenured, female, Harvard psychology professor) thought of that. In one study, Langer worked with housekeepers. She started by asking them how much they exercised. To Langer’s surprise, these housekeepers thought they got little exercise. They viewed exercise as what you do after work, which they didn’t have time for.

In her research study, Langer explained to half her housekeeper subjects that what they were doing was exercise, likening making beds, washing windows, and so on, to the use of various exercise machines at the gym. No other changes were made. The housekeepers were not instructed to work harder or eat differently.

In Langer’s study, the control group were given no instructions or explanations.

The group given the explanation that they were, indeed, working out, lost weight, experienced a positive change in waist-to-hip ratio and body mass index, and a reduction in blood pressure.

The control group experienced no changes.

You may not have heard of Langer, but you have heard the term “mindfulness,” which Langer coined as it’s currently used independent from its origins in Eastern philosophy and accompanying meditation. Langer turned work into healthy exercise using a change of mind. I found a way to turn clean-up into dance with a change of mind.                  

My husband and I live with our two-year-old granddaughter. Scattered about are toys for climbing, toys for building, tools for drawing, a little tykes car, a bike, a mini grocery cart, and a toy kitchen where she prepares vegetarian (if wooden food replicas are vegetables) meals for anyone nearby. In other words, the living room is an obstacle course.

The living room also happens to be my favorite place to dance, so to use it, I have to change her play area into an environment for my play. But girls just wanna have fun, so I make the clean-up part of the dance. I put on my favorite dance music, and in rhythm, put her toys away. With my clear space, I dance ecstatically.

I didn’t take into account how slow sod breaks down. If I expected to have a second plantable bed, I had to separate the grass from the soil and rocks. I’d hold a clump of sod, shake firmly, pull to smaller pieces, shake again, and gently pull visible earthworms from the roots to put onto the bed, which left rich dirt filled with earthworms on decomposing newspaper. Voila!

Voila indeed. This took hours of dirty work. If I was going to persevere, I had to make this more pleasant. I began to do a dance with the earth. To garden is to interact with the soil and the life it sustains. To dance is to interact with the space and life around you. My shaking and pulling, kneeling and standing, throwing and placing, became a dance with this earth.

Kneel, reach, lift, shake, one, two, three, four. Puuuullll, shake, one, two, three, four. Separate carefully and toss, gently.

And repeat.

Reach, lift, shake, one, two, three, four. Puuuullll, shake, one, two, three, four. Separate carefully and toss, gently. Again. Again. Again…

Well, it is good exercise.

To others, I wasn’t dancing. I was, at best eccentric, at worst a lunatic. The image of a dance with the earth was a comfort. I went to sleep with visions of earthworms dancing in the bed.

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Our entire body communicates. With each movement, we convey our preference to interact or to not interact. 

Last fall, Gary and I were walking with Nova in her stroller, and we passed a man admiring a building’s architecture. He gestured at the facade of the building, sweeping his arms up to follow staircases, along the outdoor patios, railings, windows, his hips, legs and feet following his arms, in appreciation of the angles and of the gathering spaces. He ended by saying how much he’d like to be invited to a party hosted on one of those patios. I was interested in hearing more, but my husband forged on. The man followed us, continuing to talk and gesture.

Contrast this with a woman we’d see frequently at a local park when our granddaughter was still an infant. She would politely respond to our greeting but her flat tone and body language made it clear she had no interest in interaction.

On an outing to a local grocer, Nova wanted to walk so she could pull stuff off shelves but was in her stroller for that reason. We walked towards a woman who greeted us, with eyes clearly on Nova. Nova responded with a lift of her foot, pointed at her shoes and said, “on, on.” I explained she was saying she has her shoes on. The woman lifted her foot, pointed to it, and said to our toddler, “I have my shoes on too!”

Interactions can suddenly become dance. As we stroll the sidewalk, we often run into a woman who reminds me of Jim Carrey in The Mask. She is tall and lithe and wears loose-fitting slacks, vests, a hat, and a bow tie. And a mask. She communicates with words but often adds a little dance, and I join her.

Last summer, my daughter and I were pushing Nova in her stroller to an outdoor market, when a woman at a bus stop spontaneously engaged with us. Nova was dressed in boyish hand-me-downs but the woman called her “she.” I asked how she knew Nova was a girl. She explained, “Boy babies don’t dance. Your baby girl was dancing in her stroller.”

Nova loves to dance, just like her Mama and her Nana. Nova’s stroller wiggling is one of her many dances.

Living with a toddler of 22 months is great fun. Nova is fascinated by all vehicles: buses, delivery and service trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and cars. She’s especially interested in industrial vehicles such as garbage trucks that lift and dump the contents of garbage cans into their cavernous receptacles. She also likes to wave to drivers, who sometimes return the wave.

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We take Nova to a park that has spacious grass fields surrounding a baseball diamond, play equipment, and dog parks. Nova has seen lawn mowers, but one day she got to see a really big lawn mower trimming the field. The driver saw her, beeped his horn, and waved. When home, she told her parents and brother about the big mower she saw.

We visit the park on mowing day as often as possible. During a recent trip, special fun was in store. We stopped to watch the big mower as the driver was working the last two lanes of the field. The mower approached, the driver waved and beeped his horn. Industrial mowers that trim large expanses have wings, called decks, which can be lifted off the field individually and rotated up to narrow its profile when necessary. As the driver turned to mow the last lane, he and his mower performed a waving dance for us. He lifted and rotated up the left deck of the mower, waving with his big machine to his audience of Nova, Gary and me. A man walking by remarked, "what a performance!”

Nova said, “lift up,” as she and I used our hands to mimic the waving dance of the mower. When we got home, she introduced her parents and brother to the dance. She said, “big mower” and then demonstrated the motion with her hands and arms and instructed us to "lift up.”

Who would have thought a lawn mower could inspire dance?

There are many “lift up” dance moves. In a favorite dance video, P-Square sings “So put your hands up in the air” and they dance Nova’s “Lift up.”

Our daughter, born four years later, rarely stopped moving in the womb, and I remember waking in the middle of the night when she was still. My body tensed and I woke Gary. In moments, she wiggled, and I breathed again.

As toddlers, our kids had their own habits of moving. Our son would run down the sidewalk, pumping his left arm and fist, saying “Go! Go!” Our daughter ran head first through the house with her arms trailing behind her, like wings. She led with her head the way ice skaters lead with their butts. Her movements fit her. Head-first into life. 

Our toddler granddaughter has many dance moves. The first I noted were her “crazy legs," a term coined by her mom, as she recorded Nova’s rhythmic hips and legs while lying on her back after having her diaper changed. To me, her legs and hips moved in figure eights. Nova has expanded upon those crazy eights and I now use them when I dance. Nova taught me that figure eights can be applied to one’s whole body and are especially fun with the hips and legs.

Life in motion is how I view movement —alone, with others, and with the environment—as nourishing my relationship with my body, with others, and with the world. 

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