Medhi Walerski: The Power of Dance

You mentioned earlier movement without words.

Why do you think movement without words can speak to us in a language that sometimes spoken language cannot?

What's interesting is that it makes us feel in a very different way when we connect to movement.

It goes through an energy field.

which vibrates and it feels very authentic.

I think it's harder to hide behind movement or to lie through movement while maybe through words you can.

Through movement, you don't need to understand

necessarily whether you are watching somebody else moving or whether you're experiencing movement through your own physical body.

You just need to tap into intuition and sensation and feeling And when the world is asking us constantly every day to be stimulated intellectually, coming back to something that is more felt can be very grounding.

Yeah, what always intrigues me is how I'm watching a dance performance and I might feel like crying.

I have deep emotion, tears come, and then I notice the people around me are having the same emotion.

How does that happen? We're sharing without being spoken to the same reaction in many cases.

I just find that so fascinating, the power of dance and how It must be very vulnerable for the dancer, too, because you talk about, as a choreographer, exposing your work to be judged by the world.

But as a dancer, you're relying on your physical body to do things in front of an audience.

That must be a tremendous feeling of vulnerability or pressure.

Or am I misreading that?

No, you're absolutely right.

They put a lot of pressure on themselves in many different ways.

One way is to make sure, because they've been creating or rehearsing the work, so they want to do it as good as they can.

Because it will be witnessed by people that have been with them in front of the room for many weeks.

But what I find quite different, whether you're a creator, you sit and you watch your own work, or you're a dancer, is that you're directly in action.

When you witness, you have to let go.

Others are holding the work.

While when you perform, you have the ability to switch very quickly and you can navigate the work in the present moment and make decisions right away so and because you're moving energy is not going only into your mind like it's actually there's a release

oh that's fascinating i've observed you in many events and you come across as a person who's very thoughtful and kind and curious and open and friendly Even sometimes right before you have a performance that's about to start.