Dancing Is Our Duty

Written By Meghan Ochs

Image: Meghan Ochs (three years old)

Disclaimer: In order to avoid disturbing my downstairs neighbors, I can now only dance like the Pied Piper.

It makes me sad when I hear people say they don’t like to dance, and yet, I understand.

When did I start feeling too embarrassed to dance in front of people? Somewhere between the end of pigtails and the start of braces. In high school, during required dance classes, we were told to “pick a partner” (hello, rejection) and shuffle around, stiff-armed, with a sweaty counterpart who was equally confused about the steps in a swing dance as they were about the swings that puberty was currently taking at them.

At adolescent parties, you could find more stiff limbs, fewer light fixtures, and an equivalent amount of smells. If you didn’t have “rhythm,” you were laughed at. If you were immobile on top and shaky on the bottom, you were not only lopsided, you were “weird.” If you took up too much space and closed your eyes and actually felt the music moving through you, you might be deserted and left to stand alone as the harbinger of a school-age plague.

But what about the little girl who smiled at me from her dance floor in front of the local Costco’s entrance, next to the shopping cart that was four times her size? Am I supposed to tell her to stop dancing so she won’t be laughed at? To prevent her from being rejected by her peers? No.

I’d like to end the war on free dancing.

Because we’re often told you can only dance if you’re good at it. If you pop and lock or waltz and trot in the right way. If you have the proper training and technique.

That girl reminded me of my inner child, the one who’s dying to dance around wherever she goes, wherever there’s music playing, or even if there’s simply a tune that’s stuck in her head.

Here’s my new philosophy: Swing your arms around and let them fly—let those flappers flap! In fact, whatever flaps, let it flap!

Spin around in circles until you stumble or think you might vomit. Embrace the giddy kid who wants to see the world all at once. Spin so hard you have a vision of Mother Earth calling from below (true story). Collapse and laugh. Ache from your ribs and stomach and back. But let it be a good ache: the kind of ache you only get after allowing your body to flow in the ways it has always wanted to. Live in your body like it’s the first time you’ve discovered you’re living in one.

“Free moving” dance has even been studied for its benefits to mental health. A UCLA Health study found that this form of “conscious” and “ecstatic” dancing (where there are no steps to learn; only you decide how to move) helped participants deal with stress-related conditions, such as anxiety or chronic pain. 95% of the study’s participants even said that free moving dance improved their emotional awareness; dancing encouraged them to reconnect with their bodies, including tuning in to what they were feeling inside.

When I dance, I feel freedom, and joy, and love. Have I completely eliminated all manner of self-consciousness when dancing in front of people? Not yet. But I’m working on it.

And if anyone suggests you should be embarrassed for dancing the way you want to dance, then think of the little girl at Costco, in her purple pajamas and her freedom, and dance for her. (That’s what I’ll be trying to do, anyway.)

*Woohoo! Here are 12 of my favorite songs to dance to:

Meghan Ochs
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