Dancing and Communication

Perhaps one reason I admire dancers as much as I do is because it is one of those things I do not do very well. I am not just talking about trained, professional dancers but also people with no particular talent but who are not afraid to get out on the dance floor and move to the music. It is fun to watch and fun to join in. But what I find particularly noteworthy is a certain skill that good dancers possess that can and does apply to communication. Good dancing is not an act of isolation. It requires collaboration and sensitivity to another. Even dancers who are without partners are moving in harmony to music, so, in that sense, dancing is never purely solo.

Watching two dancers dance, one can see several decisions being made by the partners: how closely should they be together, how closely aligned should their movements be, should the movements themselves be lively or more subtle, and how often, if at all, should the two dancers actually come together or touch. All of this is influenced by their environment in the form of the music itself, other dancers and their own past experiences with and knowledge of dancing and the music being played. This dynamic is not all that dissimilar from what communicators work through when they attempt to connect more than one public.

One can easily make the case that effective communicator is a specialized dance. It involves helping more than one public move in harmony, making choices as to how they will move, and working with an array of outside triggers or elements that comprise the environment in which such a connection is being attempted. Communication is a dance and, conversely, dancing is communication. Further, if one possesses the sensitivity and desire to effectively link to another, then not only are they are on their way to becoming an effective communicator, but they are also their own to becoming a successful dance partner.