5 Rhythms dance is a simple movement practice designed to release the dancer that lives in every body, whatever its shape, size, limitations or experience. 5 Rhythms was devised, over the last 40 years, by Gabrielle Roth, a dancer, artist and musician living in New York City.
Gabrielle Roth challenges dance orthodoxy by proposing that instead of teaching our bodies steps, we should give them space and encouragement to find their own movement. Movement from inside the body, rather than movement that’s imposed from the outside.
The five rhythms are flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. They come together to create the Wave, literally a wave of energy that moves through your body and your dance. The Wave starts slow, builds up to a crescendo and then comes down the other side.
Flowing is the first rhythm, the focus is on fluidity and circular movements that spiral your awareness inwards, to check-in with yourself, see what’s going on and what you are needing for the journey ahead. The invitation is to slow yourself down and find the unique thread of today’s dance, and then following it wherever it leads.
As you drop in to your dance, giving your body permission to follow whatever impulses you find, you move into the second rhythm, Staccato. Here you give expression to whatever’s going on inside your body through lines, angles and clear movements. There’s a kick in the beat and your dancing body picks up speed, pumping its way into Chaos.
Chaos is the rhythm of release, with a fast and chaotic tempo. The invitation of this rhythm is to let go, to surrender to the beat and let everything move at once. As your relationship to the practice develops, more and more you find that you’re no longer ‘doing the dance’, because ‘the dance is doing you’. Self-consciousness disappears, and you’re in a state of grace, just you, your body, your breath, the beat and the dance.
When you’re truly in this place then you’ve found Lyrical, the fourth rhythm, your movement finds a lightness that takes no effort. If Chaos is boiling water then Lyrical is the dance of steam billowing up out of the pan, liberated into the wide open space. For many there is a transcendent quality to lyrical, conscious and grounded, yet light, out-of-the-ordinary, and free.
From lyrical you slow down into the last rhythm Stillness, where once again you go inside to listen for impulses and the poetry of the body. Having danced the first four rhythms you’ve made space inside from which come new and sometimes unexpected movements. Stillness is danced at a pace similar to Tai Chi, a slow, deliberate dance, that for some has the quality of a prayer.
There is a meditational quality to 5 Rhythms dance, where emphasis is placed
on awareness of your body as you are dancing and particularly your breath. Most
of us breathe at a level way below the full capacity of our lungs. When you
breathe deeply you become more fully in touch with your emotional self, which
can then be expressed through the dance. Gabrielle Roth says “The fastest
way to still your mind is to move your body.”
5 Rhythms is usually taught in classes lasting about 2 hours. Most classes will
have people with a range of experience, from first-timers to those who have
been dancing the Wave for years. The teacher will encourage you to relax your
body, allow yourself to breathe deeply and fully, and let your body find its
own movement. S/he will offer exercises or examples to illustrate the five rhythms,
and encourage you to experiment with these.
During a class, you’ll probably dance on your own sometimes, and with a partner or a group at other times. Dancing with a partner is an opportunity to notice what you do in relationships with others, do you get shy and self-conscious or loud and brash? What’s it like to dance with different people, people you’re attracted to, or people you don’t like? Dancing with a partner can be a good place to experiment with different kinds of behaviour. Sharing a dance with someone else, who is aiming to be open, responsive and non-judgemental, can offer a rare moment of intimacy, in this fast-paced, disinterested day and age.
The rhythms are the foundation of the body of work developed by Gabrielle Roth, which offers a healing process, integrating body, heart, mind and soul. You can use 5 Rhythms dance however you want. For some it offers a path of self-awareness and discipline, for others its simply a way to let off steam at the end of the week and have a good dance.
'This cathartic form of ecstatic dance is a workout for body and soul – a moving meditation – a spiritual practice where we ‘sweat our prayers’. Gabrielle Roth
(An amended version of this article first appeared in the magazine Positive Nation, by Tim Foskett)
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