Doctor Cheryl Halliburton
A dancer, teacher, and choreographer who has taught and performed on both coasts.
When I was invited to contribute to G&E in Motion, I was thrilled and honored. And concerned. Who, besides other dancers, cares anything about dance? It’s the step-child of the arts. The last choice of the performing arts. The most underfunded and underappreciated art form. Dance productions and performances, unlike theater performances, have audiences filled mainly with their own kind, other dancers – with a sprinkling of non-dancers and die-hard dance enthusiasts. We are a small but hearty group. Besides, what would I write about? And who am I to even offer my thoughts?
But then Covid-19 happened. Sheltering in place. And racial inequities exploded around the country live on television. Black Lives Matter-ed because we saw them fall so precipitously at the hands of those who were supposed to “serve and protect” us. Demonstrations. Looting. And more racial brutality. Where does dance fit in? Can it? I wondered if dance has the ability to help heal people’s trauma.
I am an African-American woman. I’ve been a dancer for forty-plus years (yeah, I’m getting up there), a choreographer, dance teacher, professor, and student of the art form. I’ve danced on both coasts and have experienced a full dance life. Recently, confined by “shelter in place”, I’ve had time to reflect on that life; the experiences, performances, peoples, and travels it has offered me, and my life outside of dance that continues to revolve around us all. Dance has given me so much – love of movement, acceptance of myself and others, an appreciation of friends, family, and even strangers, in environments both home and abroad. It has given me a voice and a medium to express my innermost thoughts and feelings. When I studied about student engagement through dance for my doctorate, I got to see and respond to dance in a new, more thoughtful way. So maybe I might actually have some thoughts and reflections to share. Dance is not just an art form. It offers delight in personal sensations (sensationality), physically and visually, but also has the ability to facilitate transformation and growth. We are desperately in need of these life affirming benefits.
SENSATIONALITY
After retiring from a twenty year performing career and a twenty-five year teaching career, I’ve enjoyed the luxury of joining two different book clubs. One of the books that has inspired and enlightened me is by the Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat; it is called Create Dangerously. A book club colleague, a wise and insightful woman who is also an English professor, was inspired to ask each of us club members: “Who do we think we are?” in terms of our places and people, and how does that inform who we are? I thought that particularly appropriate in thinking in terms of this blog and of where and how dance just might fit into our shared conversation. I’d like to share my reflection response to Create Dangerously with you:
The sun beats through the large open windows, shining relentlessly on our warm and limber bodies. Adding to the sweat running down straining torsos, warm daylight creates puddling into all the concave curves of the multiple bodies. I look over at the other dancers; we smile and groan together, almost as one.
The drums pound their timeless unbroken rhythms as the dust clouds billow up from the vibrating heads of the animal skinned percussion instruments. The drum beats ebb and flow, intensifying with escalating body movements, and softening with the fluid accents of floating, undulating limbs. Music and movement in and out of harmony. In balance and partnership.
The dark wooden floor is cool against hot prone bodies. Worn and mostly smooth, the floor holds the scented memory of many sweaty, smelly feet, and hard-working bodies. The scent binds past and present together. All those bodies visit that floor in many ways: some glide, some roll, others jump, and twirl on it, across it, above it. Propelling themselves across the long narrow room, the glistening human forms contort, reshape, intermingle, and extend in new, unanticipated, and often exciting ways.
Our free-flying figures feel and respond to the music, lights, and textures engulfing and surrounding them. We experience it all, through all our senses. We feel. I feel. I share my feelings, thoughts and intentions with the others in the room. Attacking, retreating, bounding over and through, rolling under, and finally, all are at rest.
Exhaling, I relax. The dance is done.
The sensational memories, physical, visual, and emotional, of the exhilaration created by and through dance are what I have been offered, and what I have to share. I want to share what usually only dancers get to experience. Those feelings, those lessons, those joys. It is the reason I have agreed to write for this blog, and it just might offer some insight into healing – for blacks, for whites, for all people, and for the nation. An audacious goal indeed. Our feelings are perhaps the essence of our shared humanity, and without that humanity we might never find the peace we crave.
Few people get to actually feel life as intimately or as fully as a dancer does. We get to feel physically the stretch of our muscles, the tightness and loosening of joints and limbs. But we also get to share, feel, and make emotional and social connections. When dancers inhabit a physical space, like a studio where they create and/or reimagine work, this experience creates shared emotional responses and sets up a social contract that is intimate and oh-so-personal. When we are deprived of that shared space, as we are during a pandemic, we still are able to sense allied feelings that travel beyond and through space. The only hierarchies in these spaces are when teachers mentor students, or choreographers direct performing dancers. These hierarchies are practical, functional, and mutually beneficial as mentees reciprocally inspire and inform their mentors.
That’s not to say that sharing always comes easily. I remember the first college dance class that I ever taught. A friend of mine, another African-American dancer, was adjunct faculty at Stanford University where she taught two dance classes. We both were still actively performing with our respective dance companies and she had a new but temporary performing opportunity that periodically conflicted with her teaching duties at the university, so she asked me if I would substitute for her. It sounded like fun, and a good opportunity for me – plus she was paying me for it (artists are always in need of additional funds).
I drove the hour-long trip from my apartment in the East Bay to Stanford’s Palo Alto campus. I was awed by the beauty of the campus and the whole area. A stark and vivid contrast to the noisy, bustling city streets of my alma mater, Boston University. This campus was the epitome of the American dream, and white privilege. Palm trees and wide straight roads, lined by what looked to me like stately mini mansions. Wow, how beautiful and foreign it all appeared.
I entered the campus and found the building and studio where I was to teach. The first class was a “beginning” level African-American Dance class. Wasn’t quite sure what an African-American Dance class was, but my friend had assured me it was whatever I wanted it to be. After all, who would dare to challenge or question an African-American woman’s definition of African-American dance? I was excited and a bit nervous, anxious to do well. So I walked into the studio, introduced myself, and was relieved to be welcomed by a group of young women eager to learn and please. The class was fun, and they were wonderful. They even asked me to come back to teach them again. They made me feel great, and boosted my confidence.
That didn’t last long. As the first group was leaving the studio, the second class, the “intermediate/advanced” class, was entering. Totally different energy and experience. This group of a dozen young women, all white except for one, strolled into the studio, dance bags slung over their shoulders, and scowled disapprovingly at me, as if to say, “who are you, and what do you think you can teach me?” I had to turn my back on them so they couldn’t see me stifle the laugh bubbling up inside me. I walked over to the sound system to ready it for class. It was obviously going to be a more challenging – and perhaps more fun – class experience. I suppressed my smile while thinking, “I’m going to show you little snots (not the word I actually used, but you get the idea) who I am and what I can teach you!” They were sweating bullets by the end of the first warm-up, but they were laughing and smiling too. There’s something about moving your body and stretching it to its limits that helps break down barriers and resistance. I kept the challenge up, and they gallantly and eagerly accepted it. By the end of the class, we were all the best of friends. They too asked me to return to work with them again. They loved the challenge that I offered them. White privilege be damned. There was no room for that in the dance studio. We were all dancers and had shared a sensational experience while overcoming physical as well as social and emotional challenges.
Sensations are also shared with those who watch dance and get to experience movement visually. I remember the first time I saw the Rockettes perform at Radio City Music Hall when I was 7 or 8 years old. How could so many bodies work so closely together and make me feel the power of what their communal unity felt like? Or the first time I saw The Nutcracker performed, or Alvin Ailey’s Cry. Was Judith Jamison real? How could a human being exist and share her power and joy so that I was also able to feel that power and joy resonate through my body, across a crowded theater? I wanted that. I felt that. The sensual magic of dance is also transmitted visually. Even spectators get to share in the wonder and magic of sensations relayed through dance.
The sensationality of dance crosses time as well as space. I felt the power of Jamison, the magic and beauty of The Nutcracker, and the community of the Rockettes in their singular glory from my distant seats in the theater. But I know dance’s sensations also transverse time because when I remember a dance experience, I can still see and feel those same sensations again. I am at Radio City or City Center or Lincoln Center once again, feeling the same wonder and joy, just as I did then. That’s pretty magical. The sensationality of dance makes sights, sounds, feelings, and emotions real and present for each person, whether dancer or audience member, who chooses to relive the power of that movement.
TRANSFORMATION
But dance is also transformative. It drives us to change. It is a change that we cannot anticipate. A change we did not know we asked for - or needed. My life is an example of the transformative power of the dancing body.
As a young child, I was painfully shy and excruciatingly fearful. I remember when I was maybe four or five years old, my parents and I visited the home of some family friends. I don’t think I knew them very well. I didn’t want to know them either, I think. My mother sat me on the couch while she and some of the adults went about their adult conversations and business. I think they must have left the living room and gone to the kitchen. I vaguely remember (or maybe I heard the story so often from my parents I only think I remember) the astonishment of the adults when they returned to the living room that I was still sitting in the exact same spot my mother had placed me. I hadn’t moved an inch. I don’t know how long I sat there but it must have been a considerable amount of time for a four or five year old to obediently stay in the spot where her mother had told her to stay.
It never occurred to me to move from that spot, to disobey my mother, to go explore my new surroundings. I couldn’t ask for permission because I wouldn’t speak unless spoken to. I could only obey and smile. Life was too scary. I was timid to the extreme. I remember being that way through most of my early childhood. Always quiet, timid, and obedient. Even in school and with my few friends. I was “the good girl” who tried to be good and do right.
When I share the story of my shy and quiet younger self, my friends, students, colleagues all find it hard to believe. I suppose I am far from timid or shy now. I have no problem expressing my thoughts and feelings. I am more fearless and independent, someone who proudly lives and thinks “outside the box.” And yet I was timid and afraid back then. I remember that child intimately. I remember feeling the constant knot of fear that lived within her/me. What might I have revealed about myself if I had let anyone in? Let them see the real me? Maybe no one would like me or approve of me. Self-acceptance, and subsequently acceptance of others, is one of the magical transformations that dance has bestowed upon me.
I look back on that time and appreciate my parents’ many efforts to encourage me out of my shell. It must have been rough for them. Nothing really worked, until I was eight. At eight years old I was old enough to take dance lessons (ballet) with Mr. Gray at the neighborhood dance studio in Brooklyn. He changed my life. Dance changed my life.
I was the youngest and smallest in the class. Of course, I still never spoke but I was able to perform the warm ups and exercises, and experienced a kind of peace, for the first time I think. I was learning to be in tune with my body; my inside and my outside began to work together. What a revelation! I could perform the pliés, tendus, passés at the barre, and fly across the floor performing tombé pas de bourrés glissade ensemble with a freedom I’d never before experienced. I felt free, and it felt REALLY good. Each section of the dance class acquaints the student with one’s own body in relation to others while enabling an understanding of self in relation to the environment. I didn’t speak often but I would answer when Mr. Gray asked for or about a particular ballet term. It made me proud when I could answer and no one else in the class could. Hey, I got that right. Ballet revealed my first hint of self-esteem, confidence, and value.
A little more than a year later, I was chosen with another girl (I think her name was Gail), to perform a pas de deux for a televised performance. I was naturally terrified. I knew the choreography, I had a beautiful costume, and had no clue why I’d been chosen. Why me? I didn’t think I had earned that chance. There were so many bigger and better dancers than me in our class. But Mr. Gray assured me I was ready. Of course, I didn’t believe him. In the television studio for the performance, there were risers with an audience (mom and dad were there somewhere). There were other performers, older dancers with much more experience and confidence, and lots of lights and cameras. What was I doing there? When we two were called for our performance, I concentrated hard. I couldn’t disobey or disappoint anyone. It was as if I was on the couch again, doing what I was told. Somewhere during the performance, I focused on Mr. Gray’s face and saw him smile; he motioned for me to smile too. I focused on him and did what I was told. Suddenly it wasn’t so scary. Actually, it was kind of fun.
When I saw a videotape of the performance later, I did look terrified. But I performed the dance well, and I didn’t mess up. My mom’s critique said it all: Why did you let Gail dance in front of you when you were performing? You were way better than she was. Thanks, Mom.
When I participated in my next performance on a much larger stage, with lots of dancers (there were 13 of us), I wasn’t so petrified and actually enjoyed the experience. It didn’t matter so much that my grandfather said he didn’t understand it. I still felt good and, better yet, the dance had felt good and I knew I did well! I believed in me and my ability, probably for the very first time.
Since then, through the many years of performing, teaching, and choreographing, I’ve witnessed this transformation occur in many other dancers. I’ve seen my own dance students drag themselves into an early morning dance class, and transform from grumpy-sluggish- reluctant learners into energetic and enlivened students, engaged and ready to conquer the world. They were new people. I’ve been reminded of the transformative power of dance whenever I teach – not just for the students, but for myself as well. I feel better, more exhilarated after class, no matter my mood before class begins.
I learned later that this biological/cognitive process of transformation wasn’t just in my head. When I began my doctoral studies in interdisciplinary education, I learned how the body and mind are seamlessly joined in the dance class, creating a whole body experience, an interconnected relationship between perception (watching dance) and action (performing movement). In other words, we learn not only by seeing and hearing, but by doing. Developmental psychologist Howard Gardner recognized how dance can affect cognitive development, acting as a way of knowing and something to know about. He helped me understand my own growth and transformation through dance. As a dancer and performer, I grew as a person. As I worked with various dancers and choreographers, I learned to access a part of my inner self about which I was only vaguely aware. Was this just my journey? Or did others experience this transformative power of dance as well?
I read about an organization in the UK called Dance United that recognized the value and potential that dance had to change peoples’ lives. I was amazed to find like-minded dancers who believed that dance could motivate, inspire, and engage even the most reluctant and needy among us. Dance United was a dance education organization for at-risk youth, headquartered in London but with satellite groups throughout the UK. Here was a group of dancers who believed so strongly in the transformative power of dance that they created an organization to empower and transform troubled at-risk youngsters to introduce them to the tools offered by dance, to control and improve their lives, and to raise their self-esteem.
The American education system has largely ignored what I accept as an untapped truth: dance can change us for the better. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to England, Dance United had folded as an organization. Fortunately, however, one of its satellite groups survived (and remains active today) – Wessex Dance Academy – and they generously and graciously welcomed me into their academy. Those two weeks were joyous and inspiring!
What I found was more than I could have imagined or hoped for. In studying this organization, I witnessed the deliberate use of dance to motivate underachieving and at-risk youths (their targeted group) to engage or re-engage in their own learning. It was through this engagement that they were able to increase the academic and social successes of the mostly teenage youths. WDA aimed “to instill focus, creative thinking and clarity of purpose in people who are excluded, at-risk and vulnerable’” (dance-united.com). This created a turning point in the lives of these young people; it certainly did in mine. The academy’s record of accomplishment has been documented over a period of more than ten years. I wonder why we, in the States, have not followed the path they carved that has led to the individual triumphs I witnessed there.
Maybe it’s my fool’s dream but I believe that whether or not we are dancers, we can use dance to make individuals feel better about themselves, to make us appreciate the uniqueness of those others around us, and to be more tolerant of those differences. How else can we see the humanity in one another except through the arts? Through accessing our mind/body connection with dance, we just might learn to feel good about ourselves and realize the benefits of living and working together as a singular society.
I challenge you to dance. Dance the next time you’re feeling lonely or isolated, or when you witness the brutality that has become so commonplace on our television screens and in our lives. I believe there are few things that can elate and reassure you like the freedom you experience when you dance! It can happen at any age when we use our bodies to connect to our minds and emotions. It brings us power and peace.
Until then, no peace no justice.
Merde,
Cheryl
Doctor Cheryl Halliburton is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer who has taught and performed on both coasts. Her recent choreography includes a piece about the border wall for the dance company at Salisbury University (MD). An Associate Professor Emeritus from LIU and an Adjunct Professor at Adelphi University, she spends her pandemic days reading, writing, and preparing to virtually teach her students about Africa and its contributions to American culture.
G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.