It's OK to take time away from dance!

Aaah, it's summer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere): a time for cookouts, beach days, and air conditioning. Dancers might be on layoff or taking time away from the studio in between seasons – or still rehearsing, performing, taking class or intensives, teaching, and competing.

Time away from dance can come with guilt and/or anxiety about not progressing (or even losing progress). Yet not taking time away can build upon exhaustion that's already there, a compounding effect that can be a recipe for burnout. On that note, I want to affirm that it is okay to time away from dance – in fact, it could even be quite beneficial. Further, it could even be quite necessary in order to move forward as an artist.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Taking time away from dance could be important if you're noticing that your passion for it has faded, you're finding your creative well dry, or you're simply tired and you need the time away for self-care. These are signs that you might be in burnout.

If you are, it's not something to judge yourself over – because that's simply not useful (and it doesn't feel good!). Yoga shows us a more fruitful and enjoyable path: to notice what is, and then respond in a way that will lead you to a place of better balance, harmony, and equanimity.

If your intuition is telling you that time away from dance is the best answer for you, know that you can craft it be what you need it to be: however long and to whatever degree. For example, you can take any amount of time with no dance in your life, not even watching a YouTube video and scrolling past dance videos on your social media feeds.

Or you could take it more as a time for your body to take a rest from dance, while you watch, listen to, and/or read dance-related content. There are no rules about what it has to be! Of course, I do acknowledge that if your livelihood and/or social connections could be connected with dance, time away might feel impossible for you.

With paychecks coming from dance, you can take advantage of layoff or studio closing periods; even two weeks could be meaningful. Something is always better than nothing. With social connections from dance, there are so many ways to stay connected with people these days, and you can try relating with dance people in your life in non-dance ways (who knows, you could learn some cool new things about your dance friends and colleagues!).

When you do come back to dance, you may very well find that your passion for it has been rekindled – at least to some degree. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. One example that illustrates this dynamic: after studios and theaters could reopen following COVID lockdowns, many dancers noticed just how special it is to move together in space – and vowed to never again take it for granted.

Rest can be productive (not that it has to be!)

First, I want to acknowledge that the guilt you might feel for taking time away from dance is real. Yet, and I really want to make this really, really clear: you don’t have to justify taking rest. You don’t owe anyone or anything being on a never-ending hamster wheel.

But I get it; you might not be able to shake the feeling that time away from dancing is wasted opportunity to advance: as an artist, as a performer, as a technician. In that case, there are many ways in which rest can actually help you move forward as a dancer. Here are some ways in which that might happen, as well as how you can capitalize on these effects!

• Use time away from dance, and the creative energy that might now be available, to dive into other art forms that call to you. That might be music, painting, poetry, or anything else creative. When you do return to dance, these non-dance creative experiences – and what you discover there – can have truly meaningful impacts on what you create and what your artistry can offer.

• Dive deeper into non-artistic experiences and interests. Those could be intellectual pursuits: learning a new language, reading classic literature, reading up on a scientific discipline that fascinates you. Or such experiences and interests could be more related to simply being: nurturing friendships, traveling, taking walks in favorite local areas. Just as with non-dance artistic endeavors, these experiences could steer you in wonderful new directions in your artistry and creative generativity.

• Nurture and get to know your body better. Time away from dance could be a great time to let your body rest. Yet you might also want to stay in shape, to some degree, through cross-training. If it feels good to you and it’s supportive of your body, that’s great: be it running, strength training, swimming, or anything else. It could also be a great time to cross-train in a way that offers both rest and action, as well as to get to know your body better. I’m of course biased towards yoga, so I’ll always recommend that! Yet Pilates, Gyrotonic, and other Somatic methods could offer similar nurturance and kinetic knowing. All of that could truly set you off on a great foot when you get back into the studio.

• Actually…and here’s a wild concept…rest! Again, you don’t have to justify resting. One thing that many dancers I’ve spoken with realized when lockdown hit was that they had been the Energizer Bunny for years – going, going, going – and that they really needed that time for a pause. That could mean more sleep, reading something light on the beach, time in nature, savoring your morning coffee – anything that feels truly restful to you. You may very well find that when you come back to dancing, that rest has positioned you to be a stronger artist than ever (maybe when you get back in full dancing shape, again, that is!).

• When you get back to dance, notice what you notice – and what that might have to teach you. You might have heard the joke about the fish responding “what’s water?” when another fish says “the water’s nice today, huh?”. The idea is that it’s really difficult to notice things that we’ve become accustomed to – at a deeper level, acculturated to (and dance is a culture of its own, a subculture perhaps): to the point that it just is what is. When you get back into class, and get over the hump of those first couple of classes back, you might have useful epiphanies about your technique or how your body works – epiphanies that could lead to big impacts on your craft. On a larger scale, you might see things about where you’re dancing, or the dance world at large – realizations that could be meaningful for your trajectory as a person in the field. When we come out of the water and then come back, we might just be able to see it as water.

Whatever the summer holds for you, I hope that you get some amount of R and R: time in the sun, days to sleep in and savor your morning drink outdoors, chances to read. I hope that you can make the best of that time for yourself as an artist, but also remember that even if you don’t, rest isn’t a waste. We need it, and we deserve it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you’d like to share – email me at mindfulmovers5678@gmail.com (even just to say hi!). As always, I share all of the above with all possible non-judgment and loving-kindness, and I hope that it’s useful to you in some way.

Happy summer, and happy dancing or time away from dancing, all!

Photos courtesy of Canva