Standing Before the Muse: Dance and Process Work

Standing Before the Muse:

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Kate Jobe

When I first encountered Process Work I was impressed by how useful it was to me as an artist. At the time I was a choreographer/dance teacher/ body worker looking for depth in my work and ways to connect with my audience or the person with whom I was working. As my identity has shifted toward being a therapist I am impressed with how useful art is to being a process worker. Both dance and Process Work have enriched my life and enhanced my personal growth. Some aspects of art and Process Work are similar; what I have learned in one I apply to the other. In this article I will talk about ways these two areas interact for me and some of the details of how they support each other.

Arnold and Amy Mindell have encouraged the use of art and dance in Process Work by developing many of the original ideas about movement and art in Process Work and supporting clients and students to experiment with movement. Many of their ideas are reflected here.

Learning and training issues

In my experience, training in the disciplines of dance and Process Work is very similar. Both have a common element of vocation. Most people who study dance or Process Work aren't looking for a job, but feel personally drawn to the discipline. Like most satisfying fields, both disciplines demand a lot of people who study and work in them: it seems to take approximately the same number of years (5-30) to become somewhat proficient in either. Both require a propensity or talent, active continuing education and personal involvement.

Each person has her reasons for pursuing dance or Process Work and her own path for doing so. My path to dance started in high school when it was introduced as part of our physical education program. At that time dance satisfied my need for physicality and had the depth of social action (in choreography) and self expression that helped me discover aspects of myself. It lacked the competition of sports and allowed me to escape from my dreaded school to take specialized classes.

In college a few years later I had the chance to go to Russia to study ballet. I went to St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, with a small group of high school and college students on a six-week summer exchange program. Although it was primarily a language program, the director of my dance school arranged for us to study at the Kirov Ballet. I was 20 years old and a relative beginner.

Some mix-up happened and we were put in the soloists' classes. We were dancing with some of the most accomplished ballet dancers in the world. Although in ballet classes you practice many of the same steps from your first to your last day, the combinations and constructions are more complicated and difficult in advanced classes. As a beginner I was totally sunk. I would do as much of the class as possible and then sit, watch and cry with frustration at being unable to do what the other dancers were doing. That frustrating summer became magical, transformative and empowering. I struggle to describe exactly how my commitment to dance shifted. Something clicked in me and I understood that it was going to take everything I had to become a dancer. Dance had to become me instead of being something I did. During those six weeks I made the decision to really go for it, to pursue dance in a single-minded way.

In Russia I saw how dedicated the dancers were to their art. While we were there, one woman was asked to dance her first minor solo part in Swan Lake. We watched her rehearse, and it was touching to see her try a movement, over and over again failing to satisfy herself and her teachers. She looked like she was suffering and simultaneously refusing to be satisfied with less than her utmost. She seemed to put her personal issues aside long enough to achieve something that at first seemed far beyond her abilities. Seeing someone who was such an accomplished dancer being so humble was an inspiration.

Dance and Process Work: intuition, inspiration or skill

Inspiration often seems to draw people to dance and Process Work. I remember my first piece of choreography. I was inspired, longing for dance to pour out of me. I wanted to dance about Harriet Tubman, the African American woman who led slaves out of the Southern United States as part of the underground railroad. I worked and worked on the piece, but nothing happened. Performance looked so easy when I went to dance concerts and saw the wonderful movement and meaningful choreography. Years later I realized that I was missing the tools to accompany my inspiration and passion. Fortunately, I had a teacher who let me struggle just enough to get the lesson and then helped me out.

In both dance and Process Work, I have had an ongoing conflict about whether to focus on skill building or on inspiration as a means for creation, learning and teaching. In my experience, inspiration and skill give each other forums in which to exist. One without the other is rarely satisfying. The dance between the two often keeps an event alive. Many of us have had the experience of thinking that intuition and the freedom to follow passion and impulses is what really makes a dancer, artist or process worker, then being convinced that skills and structure are the only way, followed again with the realization that we need to be free and impulsive. Lao Tsu addresses the dance of polarities in the Tao Te Ching.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.

All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short contrast each other;

High and low rest upon each other;

Voice and sound harmonize each other;

Front and back follow one another.

(1972: Chapter Two) Along the way toward becoming a dancer I often wondered if all of the careful training I was getting was in fact limiting my natural expression and inspiration. Did the countless "plies" dull my lust to move? Did strict training inhibit my sense of freedom? I think my training stifled me at times, but I was also frustrated by not having sufficient physical skills and experience to feel free. Consequently, my inspiration was shortlived. Skills have finally given me a firm foundation and support to use my intuition, imagination and creativity. I often think it is a miracle that anyone sticks with difficult disciplines long enough to become proficient in them.

Breaking rules is a basic creative freedom, but that freedom can be limited by lack of a strong skills foundation. Years ago a friend told me the following story. He was a talented flutist and was just starting to study with a famous flute teacher. In one of his first lessons, he missed a note, and she said to him, "That's a mistake that you don't make. Practice and come back to me when you don't miss notes." This philosophy maintains that a solid foundation is the beginning of artistic freedom. When you know your craft so well that you don't have to think about what you are doing technically, you become highly flexible. At a certain point, you are no longer ruffled by mistakes, and so called "mistakes" become the soul of inspiration.

Recently on National Public Radio I heard Cassandra Wilson talk about her rendition of the blues song "Baubles, Bangles and Beads." Her version of the piece emerged from a difficult performance situation. She had been singing with her family for most of her life and was making her first solo appearance at a club in New York. The already tense situation was further complicated by the fact that the song writer was in the audience. This rather upbeat song was the first on

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her program. She reported opening her mouth and singing, "Baubles...." Then she couldn't remember what came next. Slowly, she recalled the word, "bangles..." and going on, slowly, "hear how they jing-ling-a-ling...." As she followed the pace set by forgetting the words in the beginning, a haunting performance of the song emerged. This slow version became her standard rendition of the piece.

Contrasting this, in one of my early performances, I was very anxious to please and impress my audience. I was in a new city and important members of the dance community were in the audience. About a third of the way through the piece I fell flat on my butt. I was upset about the mistake and unable, with the skill and experience that I had, to use the moment as inspiration. I scrambled to my feet, and I am sure everyone in the audience knew I had done something unplanned. It takes a lot of practice to get to the point where "mistakes" are one of the roads to inspiration.

I recently had the chance to make a "mistake" that got to the core of a client's process. About 50 minutes into the hour, I felt that nothing was happening and I was not being very useful to her. When all else fails, I try movement, so I suggested that we move a little. We got up and began to move, when suddenly she backed up and said, "I don't trust you." My first impulse was to assume I was doing something wrong and shouldn't have suggested that we move. Then I realized that this "mistake" was actually perfect. It helped her protect herself and to make our interaction real. She later reported that this experience had helped her feel more independent and better able to recognize how mistrustful she was of many people in her life. The work was satisfying because of her courage to voice her thoughts and my ability to be fluid enough to use the moment as a new direction for our session.

Considering skill as a necessary foundation for inspiration has been very helpful to my training in Process Work. Structural aspects such as primary and secondary processes, channel structure, edges and dreaming up provide a road map that, when needed, can guide a lost therapist. Having practiced and practiced not only gives the therapist freedom to try new things, it also helps her understand what is going on.

Frequently what looks like intuition on the part of a process-oriented therapist is a result of careful observation of structural elements. An example of observation which could appear magical recently happened in my everyday life. I was driving a car with several passengers. We were looking for a parking space, and to everyone's amazement, I pulled into position to park where a car was already parked. When the car backed out, my passengers commented on how intuitive I was at finding parking spaces. What they didn't know was that as we drove into the parking lot, I had seen a person getting into the car. Anyone could have guessed that there was a relatively good chance that the car would soon leave.

Humility

Another area that Process Work and art share is humility. Although artists have a reputation for being anything but humble, relating to the muse is a humbling experience. I remember later years in my dance career, when I was doing a lot of choreography. I wanted to have more and more control over my work and found that I had less and less. I would start to plan a dance, full of ideas about content, how it should look and the movements, but all I could do was what came to me in the moment. I could no longer predict the dance. Fortunately these dances always turned out to be more interesting than what I had in mind, but it was disconcerting until I began to see my dances as about what the muse had in mind instead of about what I had in mind.

In Process Work, humility is important in the relationship between the client or group and the therapist. It is easy to be deluded into thinking you know something that the client doesn't and that you can actually solve a problem or know the direction of their growth. At one time or another, most of us who practice therapy feel we can "save" someone from what we think we see coming for them. The danger of this thought is that in thinking it, or acting as if you could do it, you devalue the client in relationship to yourself. You also miss the spontaneity and vitality of the unknown. In Process Work, as in dance, the direction is unpredictable. The muse one stands in front of is the same. Some call this muse the Tao, mystery or inspiration.

Patterns for growth from dance and art

Dance and art have helped me develop new patterns in my life. Things that I could do in choreography fifteen years ago I am just beginning to recognize as important in my personal life. I feel that art and dance can provide new patterns and satisfy the need for contact with

something eternal in a different way than life or therapy can. People will do the most amazing things for art. A timid dancer might identify with a starkly confident character in a dance, or a writer who feels unwanted in life might write a poem about universal acceptance. Why is this? One useful thought is that art gives us a way to disidentify with our more personal selves and helps us access some part of ourselves that is already connected with the eternal. In this way, art challenges the limits of being human and gives us access to greatness, to a connection with some universal level of experience. A couple examples of this stand out to me. One is personal and the other is from my work as a therapist.

Earlier in this article I mentioned a time when I wanted more control over my choreography. I recall standing amongst the dancers and saying I didn't know what to do. As a last resort, I just moved as the spirit moved me and invited the dancers to do the same. It was then that I understood the idea of the muse as something that graces us with creativity and art. I felt as if we were the instrument for something greater than ourselves and that our task was simply to embody it on the stage. It was an exciting way to work. The question of what should or shouldn't happen next was easily answered when I took the time to notice how I felt. The question was not aimed at me, but at a spirit or muse in the background. My body simply answered the questions. How was I going to use this in everyday life!?

Like most people, I tend to think I can control who I am, what my feelings and impulses are and, to a certain degree, the direction of my destiny. With the help of a Process Work therapist I have taken the pattern of contacting and following the "spirit" which I learned from choreography and applied it to my everyday life. Thinking that the "muse" is behind my feelings gives me a little distance from my impulses, especially ones that I feel are not me. For example, I might feel hurt about something. My usual identity would say, "Don't worry about it. Everyone gets hurt. It's not going to kill you, just ignore it and go on." Connecting with being the conduit for experience allows me to experiment with expressing hurt, thinking that it simply is there and someone needs to express it for the world. Often when I or others express what is inside of us, especially in group life, there is a ripple of recognition and or relief in the environment.

In another example, I had a client who was a painter. She felt that in her relationships she was insufficiently spontaneous and too good at keeping the peace. On an impulse I asked her what she was working on in her art. She answered that she was enjoying the outcome of her recent work in which she was exploring breaking all of the rules she learned in art school. Rules about color, proportion, line, form and composition came under her scrutiny and were dashed on her canvases. Her explorations created visual tensions that intrigued her and brought life to her work. I suggested that she try the same thing in her relationships, treating them as if they were pieces of art. She liked the idea, and when she tried it with me, was refreshingly lively in asking forbidden questions.

Because dance and art are not necessarily expected to fit into the mainstream, they provide freedom to act outside mainstream expectations. The painter had a forum for experimenting with rebellion and finding her own truth outside of the dangers of direct relationship. There she could establish a pattern that helped her outside of her studio.

Process Work in art

As a consultant for many dance productions I have helped choreographers with works that seemed awkward or dead. Process Work can help find life that is hidden in a failed creative attempt or a problematic moment in a piece. When it looks like nothing lively is happening, I look for what is happening and help that unfold. I often ask the dancers what they notice that is not only the choreography. Often they are distracted by thoughts and concerns about the quality of their performance. At other times they have said that they do not even feel present, but are just doing the movement without understanding why. In one case I asked a dancer who said she "left" during her performance, to go ahead and go wherever it was that she went. She found herself by the sea enjoying the power of the wind and waves. I asked her to do the movement as various aspects of her experience: herself, the sea and the wind. In this experience she found the motivation for the movement and her performance was chilling.

On a group level, I had an experience teaching a dance class in Zurich. Things were grinding to a dull halt. Toward the end of the class, I asked the dancers to walk, simply walk, across the floor.

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Learning to walk this way is not easy. I was looking for a certain style. Over and over I demonstrated it and said, "Now go ahead and do it." The dancers couldn't seem to do what I was looking for. We were all getting frustrated.

Suddenly I realized that the walk I was looking for wasn't happening, but we could follow what was happening. We did a very basic movement exercise from Process Work. I asked the dancers to notice and to amplify whatever wasn't walking in the way I had asked them to. When they did this the most interesting and vital movement filled that room. There were all kinds of movements and images: huge monsters, limping people, and generally not so graceful things. We danced these characters for a little while. It was exciting, lively and satisfying. When we had gone as far as we could with this, I wondered what effect it would have on the more technical skill-building aspect of dance. At the risk of bringing us back into our earlier frustration, we decided to try the walk again. When the dancers walked this time, it was lively and perfect. In this example we were getting stiff and frustrated with trying to develop skills. When we looked for the mysterious movements, we were able to bring life into the room and ultimately into the walk we were trying to do.

Noticing the thing that is happening and unfolding it demands a lot of detachment. One has to give up, for the moment, expectations about how the work will go and what its outcome will be. It has been said that if you already know what the work is going to be, it is not yet creativity. This yielding to the Tao, higher spirit or inspiration invariably brings life and excitement to the work. Developing a tolerance for the unknown, for what Lao Tsu calls "the Tao that can't be told" (1972: Chapter One) is a tremendous asset.

Dance in Process Work

There are countless ways in which dance is not only useful but invaluable to Process Work. Dance has the ability to transport one directly into powerful, dynamic and lively experiences. As an art form it has the unique characteristic of not being separable from the body so that the expression and expresser are the same. Aside from the sheer enjoyment of movement and the "high" of exercise, movement offers an opportunity to join something beyond normal everyday life.

In one of the first group processes I facilitated I instructed the "dancers" simply to be aware of themselves and each other. Twenty minutes later I found myself agape at what I had witnessed. It was as if each person had melted into the group, which moved and responded as if it had a mind of its own. The individual completely disappeared. Decisions about where the group went, what rhythms it made, and what movement qualities flowed out of it happened as if it were a single individual. The dancers reported not knowing who was leading and who was following. No one could have guessed such unity existed in this group. After that experience the same group went on to produce many public workshops, concerts and a training program. We were relentlessly dedicated to the organization we subsequently formed together.¹

Curt Sachs wrote about the dance experience in the following way:

The dance is the mother of the arts.... The creator and the thing created, the artist and the work are still one and the same thing....man [sic] creates in his own body in the dance before he uses substance and stone and word to give expression to his inner experiences.

The word art does not altogether express this idea.... The dance breaks down the distinctions of body and soul, of abandoned expression of the emotions and controlled behavior, of social life and the expression of individuality, of play, religion, battle, and drama—all the distinctions that a more advanced civilization has established. The body, which in ecstasy is conquered and forgotten and which becomes merely a receptacle for the super-human power of the soul, and the soul, which achieves happiness and bliss in the accelerated movements of a body freed of its own weight; the need to dance, because an effervescent zest for life forces the limbs from sloth, and the desire to dance, because the dancer gains magic powers, which bring him victory, health, life; a mystic tie binding the tribe when it joins hands in the choral dance, and the unconstrained dance of the individual in utter devotion to the self—there is not "art" which includes so much. (1938: 3)

When reading the above passage, I could almost replace the word dance with Process Work. Although the outcome would be a rather grandi-

ose portrayal of Process Work, it represents some aspects of how I experience it. The sense of getting to the numinous, mysterious, unknown aspects of life is a common thread between dance and Process Work.

Sachs says, "The creator and the thing created, the artist and the work are still one and the same thing" (1938: 3). Process Work frequently utilizes this concept that movement and the unknown are one and inseparable when therapists help people embody their experiences.

I remember a woman who worked on her experience of asthma in a seminar. When asked how it felt, she said it felt like bands around her chest. The therapist encouraged her to create a movement with that feeling. She bent her knees, brought her elbows to her torso with both fisted hands sticking straight out from her waist. When invited to go into the movement more, the person went lower into her stance and said that she felt she was one of the figures on Easter Island. The work developed along this line until the therapist suggested that she dance the feeling and the movement. After she danced the experience for some time she looked up and said that she was protecting the sacred in herself, and that was why she needed that stance.

If this person had not had the chance to embody the dance of the process she may not have been able to identify with her own protector. She not only identified with this protective force, but profoundly effected the group's atmosphere. Everyone present seemed to resonate with the experience. Dance ethnologists, like Curt Sachs, have talked about similar effects of dance in indigenous cultures, where dance is used in ritual and healing as an important part of community life.

The ability that dance and movement have to reach into the depths of human experience is at times quite astounding. In the example above there is direct access to unknown, mysterious aspects of life that seem to bypass those sense-making mechanisms that rob us of life-giving experiences. What, for example, would have happened if the therapist had asked this woman what the meaning of her asthma was, or if he had attempted to interpret her image of bands around her chest? She probably could have had an experience, but she would not have had the chance to identify with the statues from Easter Island. The mystery of these forms is perfect for our discussion. The definitive origins and meaning of the

Easter Island figures have eluded scientists and anthropologists. Their power is carried through a direct message to some part of us that does not need words to understand. We seem to know what these massive figures are and are touched by some eternal aspect of being when we see them. In some ways it is a blessing that little is understood about them; it enriches our own experiences of them.

Stuckness

Most of us have had the experience of getting stuck in a process or being with someone who is stuck. One gentle way to work with stuckness is to ask the person to do the difficult or impossible thing that is holding them up as a dance or a piece of art. Art creates a frame, allows space and time for an energy to unfold and evolve without the scrutiny of cultural dicta such as, "What you do and say must make sense."

Bringing movement into "normal" Processes Work

Many people ask me how to bring movement into their work as therapists with people who are not dancers or identified movers. I used to think that the client had to be the right one for movement. More recently I think that the more at ease the therapist is with movement, especially her own, the easier it is for her to use movement. Another helpful attitude is to believe in the experience the client is having. By directing the person's attention to their experience and believing in it, one can go a long way in making movement not only possible but attractive.

Dancing a relationship pattern

There are many ways that dance can be helpful in Process Work with relationships. In the following example, a man came to therapy wanting to work on his relationship to his partner. He particularly wanted to know more about their interactional style. He felt that he was open to his partner and that she was saying no and shutting him out.

Since he had a great fondness for movement, I suggested that we incorporate movement. As we began to role-play their relationship, his partner said something confrontational and in response he made a hand gesture that went along with the sense of his words. He said, "I want to follow your lead," while his hand made a graceful arc from the front of his body past his side to the back. He noticed what he was doing and said that it was like Aikido, where the martial artist uses

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the energy of her opponent to diffuse an attack. The next moment he was saying, "I want to do my own thing." When his hand went in the same pattern he looked confused and said that the movement no longer went with the sense of his words. I encouraged him to find a movement that went with his words. He put his hand up as if blocking someone coming. We went back and forth finding words that went with movements and movements that went with words. Suddenly he experienced and recognized that he had two aspects inside, one that wanted to follow and one that wanted to be independent, say no and shut his partner out. He found great relief in following the hand that fended off relationship and in the knowledge that he needed time to focus on himself.

Conclusion

Process Work with movement can bring a person, group or community directly in touch with deeply mysterious and sometimes distant aspects of the dreaming process. Identifying with these aspects of one's self is often a deeply fulfilling experience. Art is a vehicle for bringing these experiences into a public forum, allowing them to influence and shape our times. Process Work also is a means to deepen these experiences, stay open to the unknown and to bring social change into a public forum.

Notes

1. We formed a group called Western Ordered and Random Movement (WORM). Our organization studied together everyday for two hours, starting at 8 a.m.!
2. Easter Island, located 2000 miles off the coast of Chile, is famous for its stone monoliths. There are over 600 of these enormous figures on the small island. See illustration behind the tide of this article.

References

Lao Tzu. Trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. Tao Te Ching. New York, Toronto: Random House, 1972.

Sachs, Curt. Trans. Bessie Schonberg. World History of the Dance. New York: Bonanza Books, 1937.

Kate Jobe is a dancer/choreographer cum process worker who designs and edits the Journal of Process Oriented Psychology. She began her dance studies with classical Indian dance at the age of 10. She travels throughout the world teaching Process Work and encountering different cultures. She recently got her own studio where she plans to launch an extended training in movement and Process Work.