SALSA THERAPY
IT’S January, it’s grey, it’s cold, it’s S.A.D., and we take up a little more space than we did in November; what to do?
The papers are full of de-tox diets to get you over Christmas and lift your spirits, TV is awash with pundits talking about mood-enhancing vegetables and herbal extracts from Patagonia guaranteed to make you feel like the sun is always shining even when you’re actually stuck in a snow drift, and I’ve got a stack of holiday brochures filled with blue skies, sandy beaches and little pavement cafes (all of which are unfortunately a few hours in a plane and a few months in the future away).
But, before you head off to Boots and empty your purse into the till on Aloe Vera, ginseng, ylang ylang and paracetemol, remember, you can take a kind of happy pill any night of the week – all you have to do is put on your dancing shoes and mosey on down to your local salsa club (overdosed on musicals at Christmas, sorry..).
Dancing is Therapy – it’s a scientific
fact!
Throughout the ages, people have used dance to express emotions, tell stories and celebrate important events.
Moving to music appeals to our basic instincts and stimulates sight, sound and touch, and exercising per se can lift your mood and reduce the risk of depression.
Dance therapy is based on the idea that the body and mind are interrelated; the various forms of therapy use choreographed or improvised movement as a way of treating social, emotional and physical problems. Moving as a group brings people together, creates social and emotional bonds and generates the feel good factor you get from being with others.
From a physical point of view, moving rhythmically eases muscular rigidity, reduces anxiety and increases energy.
Also, research has shown that simply listening to music can cut stress, improve movement, and also boost milk production in cattle….
Modern day dance pioneers including Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham established the link between ancient folk and ethnic dance and dance therapy, and through their work promoted dance as expressive and healing.
For most of us, however, dance is a way of having fun and feeling good, rather than having therapy.
Personally, in my “disco days”, a bit of shoulder wiggling and a couple of turns was about as expressive and free as I got. I was stiff, self-conscious and a bit bored, because I didn’t know what to do….and that’s where salsa comes in.
You learn specific steps – so that’s what you are supposed to do, and you learn the styling, so that’s what you are supposed to do. Frankly, you don’t feel quite so “out there” and exposed as if you were dancing in an ordinary non-salsa environment (i.e. chucking yourself around a dance floor at a birthday party or something…).
You lose yourself in the discipline of the moves, and after you’ve stopped feeling self-conscious when you’re dancing, and styling, you stop feeling self-conscious again on another level, and start to move in your own way, i.e., you occasionally forget about what you look like and just allow yourself to be there, in that particular piece of music with that particular partner.
When you are dancing you can participate
in the music; you don’t have to be able to play an instrument,
read a note, or be able to sing; you can be good, bad or indifferent;
it doesn’t matter….
One of my old music teachers told me that the songs that get to you are the ones where the beat hits your pulse. Hence, when I’m in a good mood, and I put on Los Van Van’s Tim-pop-con-birdland (preferred it when I didn’t know what it was), and he’s off going YES, YES…I’m ready to leap into dance action right there (even in my car), although I have absolutely no-idea what he’s talking about! Similarly, just put The Manic Street Preachers’ La Tristessa Durera on, and it hits me right in the heart (although any song that begins “Life has been unfaithful…” ain’t a feel good song, whatever the tune…
So, you’re in a salsa club and you’re doing the warm up; your heart beat is getting faster, then they put on a tune full of different beats, rhythms, melodies, ups and downs, and you’re off….then you do the class and your pulse picks up, then more happy music, and everyone is smiling and laughing, dancing and releasing stress, learning something new, and not sitting at home watching TV programmes about how to beat the winter blues….
Dancing is like a drug, but the only side-effects are blisters (and a bit of sweat)
photographs courtesy of Solent Studios www.solentstudios.com
top photo UK Salsa Congress and bottom photo Salsa Chillout.
On a Rickshaw No-one Can Hear You Scream…
Given that you’re on your way to an evening out for some dance “therapy”, it seems a good idea not to get yourself wound up with all the stresses and strains of driving yourself. Why not get someone else to do the hard work for you – you’re thinking stretch limo, pleasant taxi ride….very sensible. Myself and a friend, however, took the ecologically sound but frankly idiotic decision to take a rickshaw to the venue of our choice.
Looking back, when a man appears out of nowhere on a London street riding a bike with a trailer and says, “Would you like a ride in my rickshaw, ladies,” a firm “no” would have seemed in order. And in retrospect the fact that he had a little of the look of Clint Eastwood in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” – but without the hat, and the poncho, and there was no tumbleweed, actually –alarm bells should have rung. I am sure, however, that his discarding a half smoked cigar and grinding it into the ground in a threatening sort of way is simply my memory playing tricks.
Like really naive lambs to the slaughter, we embarked on our journey. The blanket and the seat gave off the not-too-faint aroma of week old tikka masala – but hey, my car is full of chocolate wrappers, what can I say! It started off pleasantly enough as he had to pull us up a hill; we exchanged a few comments, and giggled when we hit some cobbles….mistake…some terrible evil winding up gene took hold of our driver and we suddenly veered off into a side street, with cobbles and BOLLARDS. He cycled in and out of the bollards like he was on a road test for Top Gear; he cycled very fast. We screamed. He speeded up.
Then we pulled into a main street with traffic; he slowed down; we stopped screaming (it doesn’t do to scream loudly when a man is sedately pulling you in his rickshaw in central London – you can look kind of silly). Then obviously bored, he pulled off into a downhill side street with more cobbles, then more and more with cobbles, bollards and (obviously liked to live on the wild side) some moving cars… It was like that Indiana Jones film in the mine with lots of screaming, screeching, and periods of eerie calm. (My friend was a little worse than me, as she’d spent most of the drive into central London trying to throw herself into the back of my car, shouting “pedestrians, pedestrians!” She was also unnerved by my habit of accidentally pulling into side streets and saying “whoops”, don’t know where we are, but we’ll get there eventually”. So I suppose it was like déjà vu for her…..)
By now the gentle breeze was whistling past our heads like a force ten gale, and our eyes were beginning to pop……then as quickly as it started it finished…. He pulled into the main road and screeched to a halt (if a man pulling a rickshaw can actually do that) outside the club in front of a long queue. I was expecting him to tip us onto the pavement, but he didn’t…
He helped us out with the look of a boy who had trapped some little girls on a roundabout and spun them round and round till they were sick….. We got out with all the dignity we could muster. Remember Bridget Jones arriving at the hotel for her mini-break with Daniel Cleaver – our hair looked like that, but at least she didn’t smell of week-old curry.
We tottered to the back of the queue as he cycled off into the distance looking for another victim, sorry, fare, and leaned against the wall, trying to breath. And we hadn’t even started dancing…
And the moral of this story is….don’t let the rickshaw take the strain. Just walk.