Dance & Resilience: Finding Ground in a Chaotic World

I love dancers. I love them for their capacity to engage deeply with the materials of the present—what is here and where we are. What I love most is that dancers recognize this work isn’t about creating fixity or permanence, but instead the vital practice of renewing connection with ideas daily—figuring out how they might emerge at the confluence of bodies, environment, history, needs, and experience.

I love dance communities. I love them for their mobility of thought, for how they expect transformation and work together to make it more likely. Dancers know from deep experience that everything is in flux. The dancing is not in trying to hold things together, but in seeing that mobility as a source of possibility—and yourself as inevitably part of it. Dancing is the intelligence of the body thinking with the changing world.

I was a dancer for many years, most of that time in collaboration with choreographer William Forsythe and our inspiring colleagues at Ballet Frankfurt and The Forsythe Company. Now I work as a conflict engagement specialist, seeking to enable transformation when things feel stuck and hopeless, helping people step into difficult situations constructively.

Initially, I kept my work in the two fields separate, thinking that bringing them together might weaken the power that each holds. But then I saw how stiff most conventional dialogue models were and how that inhibited communication. I began teaching and saw how physical action helps people internalize conflict engagement practice. I realized I had thrown the baby of transformative dance thinking out with the bathwater.

Every situation we find ourselves in is shaped through choreographic decision-making, the ways we organize ideas physically—for example: how and when people move and speak, how space and time are arranged, or how attention is directed. But if those decisions are made unconsciously, we can end up with outcomes counter to our goals. I came to recognize that when we instead make these decisions with skill and awareness, we’re far more likely to enable situations that help people thrive.

This realization led me, over the last decade, to begin working at the intersection of dance thinking and conflict engagement—approaching the body as a consistent source of perception and our environments as outcomes of intentional physical decisions. At the heart of both practices I find a simple, powerful question:

What might be possible here that we have not yet noticed?

This question isn’t about throwing out what is. It’s about examining what is, considering what might be, and inviting that transformation.

But transformation at the intersection of conflict engagement and dance thinking can be either constructive or destructive­. We can create local systems of interaction that shut down exchange—or that help people thrive. On a broader societal level, we might design fascist spectacles that promote violence—or actions that support beneficial connection across lines of division.

The nature of transformation depends both on intention and the ability to effectively embed those intentions in action. To clarify goals, make conscious decisions, and strengthen our ability to recognize impact, we can consider:

Which questions are we asking with our work? Who are we engaging? Which systems do we create and support? What purpose do we invite people into? What is our method of communication? Which ideas are embedded in that method? How are our intentions expressed in the physical organization of our spaces and systems?

Questions like these can help promote constructive change at whatever scale and in whichever context we’re working. Dance practices can help in this process.

Dance work is both visionary and reality based. Dancers anticipate transformation and do the groundwork to move toward it. They examine and inhabit systems, experiment to understand their elements and mechanisms, and respond adaptively to shape and navigate complex and dynamic environments. With conscious practice, we can bring this mindset into any situation we’re part of. The more consciously we make decisions that impact how systems and environments are shaped, supported, or transformed, the more likely we are to find levers for constructive change.

As artists and citizens, we can expand our capacity to look at what is, understand its inner structures, and navigate that vibrant field with skill, clarity, and intent.

Dancers, I love you. Thank you for the work you do.