It’s Wednesday, November 6th, 2024, the day after the US election. We’ve all seen the election results. For many of us in Minneapolis, MN, our candidate didn’t win, and the future of our country feels uncertain.
I’m working my morning shift at the coffee shop. The usually cheery regulars are coming in, looking down and gloomy, saying things like, “Eh, well, you know. But I mean, I don’t know.”
About an hour into my shift, I peek over the espresso machine out into the dining room - it’s the most packed I’ve ever seen. But quiet. People squeezed between people into every empty chair, with nothing much to say, but with no desire to be alone.
It reminded me of 9/11, when, in 7th grade (in Washington DC, where one of the planes hit the Pentagon), they packed us all into the gym to wait for our parents to come pick us up. We all sat with our heads in our hands. Silent. Hundreds of kids and adults together in one gymnasium, afraid, stunned, with nothing to do but sit in our own discomfort.
What Do We Need in These Moments?
Now, do these moments make you want to dance?? If you’re not in touch with your innate human impulse to dance, I’d guess that sounds like a weird, maybe even rude, question.
It might seem strange to link such somber moments to something as joyful, or even frivolous, as dancing. But what if, when there’s nothing else to do, music and dance is exactly what we need? What if, buried deep in our discomfort, is a longing to move through it, together?
Movements throughout the history of humankind have shown us that in times of collective uncertainty and grief, we turn to music and dance - not as a way to escape, but as a way to process, connect, and heal. When the world feels heavy and answers seem far away, dancing together becomes a quiet rebellion, a shared language, and a reminder that we’re not alone. In these moments, when there’s nothing left to do but move, we rediscover our capacity for joy, resilience, and community.
Surprised?
Maybe you were expecting this post to be more about those quiet moments when your foot starts tapping under the table or your body sways to the music in the grocery store aisle. That instinct, that reflexive pull to move, is just as important.
Those small, spontaneous movements are glimpses of your body’s natural connection to rhythm and expression. They might feel insignificant, but they’re actually profound. They show how deeply movement is wired into our human experience, even in the mundane moments.
And when we experience uncertainty and unsafety, we revert to our training. Meaning, we reach for what we already practice, know and understand. The fact that we experience a collective freeze response to moments of crisis, like after 9/11 or on the morning after an election, reflects how disconnected we’ve become from these natural, shared practices.
Why We've Lost It in America
So, what happened? If dance is so essential to our wellness, why don’t we have shared practices like that here? In moments of grief as well as in everyday life?
It’s no accident. Our primal communal impulses have been systematically suppressed, replaced, or commodified through centuries of cultural oppression.
Colonialism imposed an erasure of Indigenous and African rituals in favor of rigid, European norms. Drumming, chanting, and dancing were seen as threatening to colonial powers, who recognized the unifying and empowering nature of these shared practices. In their place, more subdued expressions like hymn singing and private prayer were elevated as the ideals of civility and purity.
Despite this oppression, elements of vibrant communal dance have endured and evolved, and even thrived for a time in American history (swing, disco, hip hop, house), only to face new pressures in the modern era.
Capitalism and white supremacy has reshaped the way we engage with dance, turning it into something reserved for professionals, performances, or class rooms. While competitions, concert dance and niche dance classes have their own value, they’ve largely replaced the casual, spontaneous social dance floors that were once a major part of American culture. Instead of participating, we’re often more comfortable watching, as dance is increasingly portrayed as an art form meant only for the highly trained or naturally gifted.
Which, of course, increases our fear of vulnerability. Worrying about being “bad at dancing” or being “uncool” keeps us stuck in our chairs when our bodies long to move. And some of us are cut off from our connection to rhythm and movement completely. This disconnection isn’t just about dance, it’s about losing a part of ourselves.
Interesting Tidbit:
In her book Dancing in the Streets, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the history of ecstatic communal traditions and how they’ve been driven out of modern life. She suggests the only place where we still see large-scale, uninhibited group expressions like chanting or dancing is at sporting events. Think about the roar of a crowd doing “the wave” or singing along to a team’s anthem. Those moments feel electric because they tap into something primal that we rarely allow ourselves to experience anymore.
Glimmers
Outside of those contexts, shared cultural rituals in America are painfully rare, although we haven't lost it altogether. Glimmers of our longing are still there - they’re just found in smaller safety nets and niche communities.
What if we embraced our impulse to dance in the spaces we already inhabit? At the concert, at a friend’s gathering, at the backyard barbecue - the places where spontaneous dance once thrived but now feels out of reach. These everyday moments are more than just a way to pass the time, they are opportunities to reconnect, to feel alive, and to reclaim the joy of shared movement as a new social norm.
If these moments became more common in our lives, perhaps coming together in times of grief wouldn’t feel so distant and difficult. We’d have something we already knew, something we could all reach out and touch, a way to move through fear and feel safe and strong together when words aren’t enough.