Dancing Through Stuckness

I recently came across a beautiful podcast, “From The Tension of Emergence”, by Jennifer England because she had interviewed the wonderful Amy Elizabeth Fox. Another episode, featuring Arawana Hayashi, also caught my attention. I’m glad it did. Some conversations feel like gifts, this was one of them.

Arawana spoke about “stuck practice.” As she explained, “Stuck practice is about reframing what could be seen as a problem in life, relationships, or work that isn’t moving forward. We reframe it as part of the creative process.”

Jennifer summarised this beautifully at the end of the episode: “Consider something you feel stuck or tense about. Let your body guide you. Feel the stuckness fully, then give your body permission to move into the shape it prefers.”

This practice resonated with me, not only as a reflective exercise but also because it allowed me to connect my love for reflective practice with my passion for dance. Growing up, I had the privilege of having dance close to me, thanks to my mother’s work as a photographer at a theatre. Once a year, the theatre hosted dance companies from across the world, and I watched every performance, I sat in on rehearsals, and pored over the photos fresh out of my mother’s darkroom. Even during my university years, members of the Pina Bausch company regularly joined our Argentine Tango Milongas after their performances in Wuppertal.

Ballet was the lens through which I saw the world. Understanding life through movement felt entirely natural to me. Dance would have been my chosen career, but my body didn’t quite allow it. It wasn’t until my diagnosis of MS that everything began to make sense. At one point, I even considered becoming a choreographer’s notator, just to stay close to the magic.

Listening to Jennifer and Arawana’s conversation, I reflected on how my body responds when I feel stuck. It’s probably similar to being in one of Pina Bausch’s breathtaking yet claustrophobic pieces, like Café Müller. In contrast, I’d love to feel most at home in the choreography of Twyla Tharp (if you don’t know her, you might recognise her work from Hair). Her ability to blend genres, playful theatricality paired with stunningly complex and innovative movements, I’d love to carry in my heart as an invitation for how to live life. A possibility.

You don’t need to know these choreographers to understand that this practice invites us to engage with stuckness creatively through our bodies. This is my ‘thank you note’ to Arawana and Jennifer for this gift. It’s an invitation to explore how we can move through life’s tensions. This exercise has inspired me to think about movement in new ways, and perhaps one day I’ll try the same experiment with classical music—a loving nod to Benjamin Zander, who also features on this podcast—but that’s a thought for another time.

You can listen to the podcast here.