Emily Tucker- "Flow Experienced Through Dance"

 

We all have those moments in our lives where we experience something so abstract and great that any explanation of our experience seems to fall short of what we felt in that moment. I believe these moments to be the experience of flow. In the American Camino, Professor Redick explains how flow isn’t easily defined using prosaic language. Instead, it has shared characteristics with that of the poetic. “Poets use elements of the sensory world in order to reach what transcends it” (page 244). When we experience flow, our minds are separated from the action, in a state of mindlessness. When we look back on our experience is when we realize that flow occurred, and we can invoke memory to describe or explain our experience. However, memory and language carry with them preconceptions and prejudices that “thematize” our recollection of flow, meaning our words “grasp the memories’ images and organize them according to a preconception… We order the memory so that our thoughts become meaningful in the present” (page 241). In this reflection on flow, I will be explaining how flow can be experienced through dance by comparing it to the examples and definitions of flow described in chapter six of American Camino. Additionally, I will reflect on the flow I’ve experienced in my own life and how it has affected my own life.

In my personal life, the most evident encounter of flow that I can recall is when I was dancing and performing on a stage. There are numerous times that I believe I encountered flow while performing; however, that’s not to say that every time I danced, I experienced flow. Csikszentmihalyi writes that the “feeling of flow is closely associated with painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery” (page 245). Classical ballet is both a painful and difficult activity. No matter how many years you’ve trained, or how experienced you are, there will always be more technique to improve on, and more elements of discovery, which is one of the things I love most about it. It also stretches you physically, mentally, and emotionally. The physical aspect of ballet involves the stamina, flexibility, strength, etc. required to perform the steps and technique. The mental aspect involves the complex combinations and choreography. However, it’s the emotional aspect, I believe, that facilitates the emergence of flow during a performance. Ballet isn’t a sport, but an art. I’ll never forget when my teacher told me that ballet isn’t about how high your leg is or how many pirouettes you can do, otherwise it would be acrobatics. Instead, it’s about the ability to touch an audience’s heart through your dancing and movement; it’s about conveying a story and portraying art and emotion. As George Balanchine put it, “Dance is music made visible.” You can perform the same role a hundred times and every time it will be different. When dancing the role, you create a character for that role and when you perform, it’s as if you become that character you created in your head. Even if you aren’t playing a specific character, you can convey your emotions and feelings through your dancing. This is where the elements of novelty and discovery continue through dance, and where I believe, flow can begin.

One time that I experienced flow through dance was when I performed the sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker. Before I step foot on the stage a million different things are racing through my mind. I review the choreography, think about all the technique, think about my arm and head placements, continue stretching and practicing steps in the wings, and a million other thoughts that race through my head. However, when I step under the lights of the stage and begin to perform it’s as if I was transported into an entirely different world. I’m no longer thinking about the choreography and technique (they are executed via muscle memory), and my sole focus is on becoming the sugar plum fairy and feeling the music through my dancing. I’m encapsulated in a moment of flow, which can’t be described and can only be remembered by sensory feelings of the bright lights shining on my face, the darkness that is the audience, the sound of the music. When I finish and exit the stage, I’m overcome with emotions and a strange feeling of leaving a magical world and returning to reality. It’s as if the only memory I have of the moment is a feeling, not words. It’s in this moment that I truly know what it means to dance. Professor Redick states, “Flow and dance, as ecstatic, do not happen through willful action. Instead, the ecstasy comes upon the mystic, or the hiker, as an eruption…Eruption is a descriptive term applied after the happening, a result of reflection” (page 254). I believe this to be true in my example I just described. The ecstasy erupted through reflection after stepping off the stage.

Another aspect of flow is that of being “caught up” and “forgetting yourself”. “Flow is effortless and cannot happen when attention is aimed at acquiring a skill” (page 255). Professor Redick compares the steps of a hiker with that of a dancer, stating that “once the steps are internalized, they flow without attention to the steps themselves” (page 255). This reminds me of Marta Gonzalez. Gonzalez was a professional ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet, who in her old age suffered from Alzheimer's and severe memory loss. However, what’s truly remarkable about her is that when the music from Swan Lake was played, she was able to remember, after over fifty years, all the choreography and perform the arm movements from her wheelchair. Unable to consciously think about the choreography due to Alzheimer’s, I believe she experienced flow, which allowed her to perform the entirety of the arm movements with the music playing, despite not being able to remember names of family members. I believe that the sensory feelings we experienced during flow, although we may not have been directly thinking about them, can almost bring us back to the moment and serve as a better memory than descriptive words. Certain sounds, smells, and "triggers” (for lack of a better word) reinstitute the memory of the flow we experienced and can carry us back to a specific moment in the past.

Flow is complete absorption into an experience and the merging of action and awareness. By entering a state of flow while dancing, you’re able to forget about everything else for a moment and fully experience the joy of dancing. Despite the pain, difficulty, and struggles that come with dancing, the ability to escape reality for a moment and pour your emotions and soul into something is a feeling unlike any other, and it’s this feeling that make all the pain worth it. This is how I believe I have experienced flow in my life so far, through dance.