What is Creative Dance Fitness?
For those who don’t know, allow me to introduce myself, My name is Kip and I am the founder and ongoing facilitator of a unique movement workshop called Creative Dance Fitness.
I have set out to grow the connection with the community that has built around this workshop and the world of dance, movement, connection, and play. Alongside running the workshop, this blog will be the first of many where I will seek to share valuable information, my experiences in the world of dance, creative expression, fitness/movement, health, and wellness and provide further space for connection amongst the wonderful people I have met and played with along the way, as well as perhaps some I am yet to meet who also share the values of CDF.
Our manifesto:
Creative Dance Fitness and Kipfits have come to stand for a few things:
Community. Society as we know it is fracturing, social media and instant gratification are keeping us separated. The more often we can come together to dance, talk, compare notes, and connect physically, the better our physical and mental health will be.
Play! It’s so easy to get bogged down with the rigmarole of life. When we make space in our day/week/month to play, we invite presence, creativity, and imagination back into our worlds.
Curiosity. The moment we stop exploring is the moment we lose out on the magic of existence. Sometimes work needs to be done. The more we can invite exploration into our bodies and minds, the more we can turn even our work routines back to playful presence and gratitude.
Move! We live in the most sedentary period in human history. Challenging the strength, endurance, and mobility of our bodies regularly goes an extraordinarily long way to keeping us happy and healthy.
Challenge. Nothing is easy, nothing comes for free. Investments of time, energy, and effort reward us with not just dopamine, but also heighten our perception of meaning itself. When we have the challenge to overcome, we can galvanise life into being.
Music - the global language. Dancing and connecting with music takes us to another world. The world of music has no judgment and no agenda. We’re not the first to believe music has the power to heal the world.
So what exactly is Creative Dance Fitness?
Can anyone guess what the workshop entails?
You got it. In CDF we draw on freestyle dance, interactive physical games, and somewhat more conventional fitness workouts to produce a cocktail of physiological and psychological benefits.
Let’s break it down:
Creative:
How do we differentiate a creative practice from a non-creative one? Some may argue there can be creativity in anything. Certainly, we can agree that any formulaic, reproducible action/task is more likely to be creatively under-stimulating when compared with an unpredictable, improvisational open goal, where exploration is encouraged. Think of stopping to smell the roses rather than walking at speed to reach the destination. The creativity is in the breath, the curiosity, and the moments of exploration. This all sounds a little esoteric doesn’t it? Well, it is. So let’s get specific. When, in a CDF class we get to a dance-inspired game section and we are invited to engage in contact improvisation with a partner for example; this, when done right requires a highly creative response from both parties in order to fully embrace. Facing one another and touching wrists, resisting gripping with their fingers, two participants move their arms in any direction they feel like without breaking contact with the other. Neither person leads the movement but instead ‘dances’ with the other. Improvising in every moment to continue moving without breaking contact, carefully balancing between leading and following. This moment-to-moment improvisation taps into the creative part of the brain. It’s challenging, playful, and wonderfully enjoyable. Like all creative pursuits, it requires a relinquishing of ego, a playfulness, and a relaxation into being present and not seeking a destination. This release is a relief from the results-based nature of most day-to-day tasks and society as a whole.
Dance:
Now here’s a bit of intrinsic magic. Inspired by the rhythm of the music, we Homo sapiens have learned to do one of the most redeeming things in our shared culture, something that makes all of our evils seem forgivable. We gather in groups, play music, and shake, wiggle, pop, slide, bump, and groove our bodies to the beat. Everyone has their own style, their personalities often shining through in their dance moves and movement style. At CDF we use an eclectic playlist to bring about different inspirations in our bodies and each class has multiple dedicated ‘freestyle’ dance sections. Freestyle dance means there are little to no instructions and the participants are free to enjoy dancing to the music and interacting with one another as they please. This, once again, encourages creative expression and provides a space for self-led exploration of the body.
Fitness:
This is the part of CDF that is perhaps the most conventional. We all know what fitness looks like in one form or another. Strength, muscular endurance, mobility, cardiovascular fitness. We see athletes and bodybuilders running and lifting weights. Fitness training comes in many forms and can be used as a practice to test, measure, and improve upon one of the aforementioned areas of ‘fitness’. A person’s VO2 Max for example, the amount of oxygen they can take in a single breath is the best indicator we currently have as humans to determine predicted lifespan and the overall health of an individual. At CDF we employ tried and tested fitness movements that challenge the muscles to break down so that they can regrow stronger in the next few days. We use movements like burpees, squats, and push-ups to work on strength, and more unpredictable exercises like quadrupedal movement (crawling hands and feet) to work on mobility and muscular endurance. The dancing sections when facilitated at a particularly high pace also work on cardiovascular endurance as we get that heart rate pumping and keep it there for a few minutes.
Presence:
Having said all this, a loose aim of these sessions is to allow the participants to be present for an hour. To release the cerebral, heady ‘understanding’ behind what we’re doing in the session. All of the above is here to explain the method whilst we’re off of the dance floor. When we’re on it, freedom and play are in direct contrast with philosophising and trying to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing at that moment. Play now, and reflect later.