I especially love dance to the rhythm of the beat, the beat, the boom boom of the music of african origin or techno music. It makes it easier for me to let go and be in contact with a movement more primary and intuitive, and it connects me to a feeling of trance. This is not a coincidence ! Dance has the power to reactivate movements genetically programmed, related to the primary functions of survival, of social relationships, communication, etc. 

We are beings of rhythms

France Schott-Billmann explains that the human is a being of rhythms. This construction will begin as soon as the design of the fetus in the uterus, with the pulsation of the original to the heartbeat of the mother... The beat, the beat connects so at this rate, the original heartbeat. She comes to speak to a part of us also original, which echoes the genesis of our relationship to the world. 

These vital rhythms – heart beat, the rhythm of the breath – transmitted by the beat of the drum and the beat of the music, connect the dancer directly to this vital energy, and primitive. And this energy spreads throughout the body. In fact, of course, we mark the rhythm with his hands, his feet, his head, his chest and her pelvis. It is as if the body was reacting naturally to the recall of this rhythm first. 

On note également le pouvoir du balancement sur la pulsation. Il évoque cette fois le bercement du nourrisson par la mère, et procure une sensation de plénitude, d’abandon et d’union qui encourage au lâcher-prise et à la connexion à ce quelque chose d’originel. Célébrer l’origine fait remonter à la surface un imaginaire « primitif […] sous la forme d’une fête dansante-chantante ordonnée, ludique et poétique, célébration anthropologique qui revisite les sources humanisantes, et écologique qui médite le rapport à la nature  ».

An exploration of the origins : the primitive

The dance of primitive built by Schott-Billmann takes its roots in the work of anthropological and artistic of Katherine Dunham. It is not restricted to the symbolic power of the pulse. On the contrary, it develops the contact with the primitive by symbolic gestures that will embody the union of man with the earth and the cosmos. Dance of the earth and the sky (we find the famous double direction), honoration of the four points of the compass. 

And it is a time linked symbolically to these original elements that we will be able to summon the symbolic gestures and the archetypes that give meaning to our dance. It will involve, for example the representation of actions, interactions, animals, things... The connection to the heartbeat of the original wake up and the images present in our unconscious and unlocks our creativity, and our power of representation.

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You've read an excerpt from the memory of Viviane, The power of the symbolic dance-therapy. Viviane teaches at the school Para La Salsa and was formed via the method Per Se Nota. You can find it on his account Instagram : @dance.with.the.fire

Check out the schedule of the training modules in dance therapy here.