Dancing is an integral way to build a community. Tik Tok built a community of over 500 million people, with many doing dance challenges including elderly, policemen. A study in Arnold School of Public Health also found that 21% of young adolescents are dancing.
Dancing is similar to speech in which you express and communicate with others. Dancing has unlimited benefits. It makes you stronger and healthier. It makes you smarter. Dance can connect you to the world.
Dancing can raise our pain tolerance. The term dance means something cooperative in nature. Almost every society has a social dancing culture. Different societies have different dance cultures. But we can’t deny that dance connects the world. When we dance with partners or in a dance studio, it makes us more connected.
Dancing With Community
Dancing with others can be magical. You can perform dancing for fitness, enjoyment, and as a part of the ceremony. Dancing with people makes you happy and social. It changes your perception from “self to others”, and it can help to build a bonding between the participants. Lots of anthropologists have recognized the community-building effects of dancing.
“When a dancer dances in a community, the dancer's energy goes beyond the ordinary state. There is a state of harmony with other members of the dance community. A dancer experiences a great increase in feelings and attachment towards the community.”
As it is mentioned earlier, dancing has endless benefits. Even a smaller move like tapping or nodding your head can have significant benefits. When you sing in synchrony and walk around the step with others creates a great feeling of connectedness and trust. Dancing with a partner increases the willingness to cooperate.
Feel Connected and Raise Your Pain Threshold
A famous dancer and an experimental psychologist Brownwyn Tarr studies the effects of synchronized dancing. 264 students from different dance schools were asked to participate and also to learn one to four movement conditions. They were asked to learn synchronous and partially synchronous, and high and low exertion movements.
In the synchrony conditions, all the participants performed the same movements on the same music. In partial synchrony conditions, participants performed different movements on the same music. Participants were able to perform either full-body movements or to perform hand gestures while seated. A group of three teenagers was formed, and they were asked to perform their written moves or individual sequences. People who perform the same dance moves feel more connected than the others. Exertion results in raising the pain threshold.
Dancing Builds Community
Another study was conducted to check how dance connects the world? Let’s take an example, tap dance started in Irish, and now it is practiced all around the world. Although it is a solo type dance when you perform in-studio or school function, you can build your social community.
Studies were also conducted to see how singing can bring people closer. Bring music with dancing can elevate social bonding and pain tolerance. Results reveal that during singing rehearsals, feelings of connectivity, positivity, and inclusion were all increased.
So, we can say singing together can increase social closeness even when we don’t know the people around us.
The role of music in social bonding is as crucial as the role of dancing. You can connect with the world with singing and dancing in parties, marriages, mehndi functions, or other celebrations. Some people suggest that churches and armies have been benefited either intentionally or unintentionally from cultural practices like a dance. Dancing results in strengthening the bond between the members.
How Partner Dancing Connects People?
In partner dancing, the communication method used by the pairs is known as a connection. To synchronize dance movement, one partner leads the dance movement, and the other partner in the pair follows it.
It means the directions are conveyed through the physical connection between the dancers. This physical connection technique is used in many dances like Lindy Hop, Salsa, Balboa, and Modern Jive. So, partner dancing is the best way to connect with people.
Why Dancers Dance?
This question was asked from different dancers and the answers were different. Some of the answers from dancers are given-below:
“I dance because dancing is life” I dance because there is nothing like a dance. While dancing, you are physically, socially, and emotionally connected at once. We dance because dancing is our passion. When something becomes a passion then you fall in love with it.
“We dance to feel and express,” I dance when I am happy and when I am sad. It is an art and the best way to express your feelings and emotions. To connect ourselves with other people can be a vulnerable experience. Dancing can connect us with the other world around us when we never know how to stay connected with people.
“I love to express my feelings through dance. When I stand in the middle of a big dance floor, I love to express my feelings through dance” for some people dance is a cultural and personal activity. It is something that we share with the world and with a partner on the dance floor.
I dance because it makes me feel alive; feeling my body in motion in space and matter makes me feel like I’m doing something right like I’m using the only special and unique thing I have on this earth. Then, the music allows me to experiment in another dimension. So in short: dancing makes me feel completely present and completely absent all at once.”
“Dance is a connection. Connection to the music, connection to your partner, and connection to your soul. The feeling you get from when you step onto the floor the first time to the end of the last song that feeling is an exhilarating feeling. It is a feeling of freedom that cannot be explained by words; only experienced.”
Conclusion
Dancing is not just an art; it is fun, and it is a way to connect people from all around the world. When you join a dance school, you start to build your community. These are local friends. But when you perform on big occasions and screens, you build your community worldwide. You have followers from all over the world. You are emotionally connected to the world. So, dance can connect the world in different ways.