Mooners sharing their "Dance Alphabet": via Tell-Tale TV
A question for you (and please forgive me, dear dancer friends, but this one's not for you): when was the last time you danced? By and large, our culture encourages dancing in very specific circumstances: at weddings, school dances, or if you're one of a few deemed "good" enough to do it professionally. Apart from that, moving in a way that's aligned with kinetic knowing: it's an all-too-rare phenomenon.
Yet what if we lived in a world where movement – to connect, to cope, to care – was an intrinsic part of life? Arguably, that would be less something entirely novel and more a return to deep human roots. As far back as our current historical record can tell, people have moved together. A moving communal circle has reflected the sun in the sky and other visible celestial bodies: mysterious, fascinating, life-giving. Every culture has a codified movement system, both formative and revealing of its nature.
Returning to such a world is not an impossibility. AMC+'s Moonhaven illustrates it – and it's essentially paradise. Yes, the show is science fiction, yet there's nothing all that technologically advanced about how movement imbues their lives; it only takes their bodies, their creativity, and the space around them. The show is set in the year 2201. Moonhaven is a utopian colony on the moon which humans have established in order to devise solutions for a planet and a humanity in crisis (ecological collapse, famine, and war, to name just a few).
Moonhaven, AMC+ (2022)
This piece will avoid spoilers – you'll have to watch the show yourself in order to dig into the plot (and, in all honesty, I can't recommend doing so enough). We'll look into four instances that illustrate the place and power of movement within this utopia. Before we do – a quick shout-out to Choreographer Roisin Whelan for her stellar work on the show. It impacted me enough to write this essay, and even try a bit of the movement on my own body in my spare creative time.
"Dance Alphabet": a shared language of movement
A big part of Mooners’ lives is movement, from the very buds of childhood. Bella Sway (Katherine Emma McDonald), an Earther pilot who becomes embroiled in a struggle for Moonhaven’s future, sees Mooners dancing together in an expansive green space. This is not long after she arrives. These movers ground their weight into the Earth, yet reach reverently skywards. They stomp in strength, yet softly snake their limbs into curvilinear shapes.
Paul Sarno (Dominic Monaghan), a Mooner detective, explains to Bella that this is their "dance alphabet": something that they all learn as children and carry through their lives. This body-based “alphabet” thus becomes a shared language of movement for all Mooners. Yes, we have shared dances – yet are they something enmeshed in our cultural and interpersonal education as very young children?
In our reality, it’s also all too rare to see tens of us dancing together, proudly out in public. Yet on Moonhaven, it’s just any old day. It’s simply part of them and how they move through the world (literally and figuratively). Music – while energizing and wonderful – isn’t even needed. It’s embedded into their fascia, their brain matter, their ineffable hearts and spirits.
"You need the dance…to remember": moving for grief
When Bella enters Moonhaven, IO flags her as a blood sister of a Mooner woman who was recently murdered [IO is the advanced artificial intelligence that makes Moonhaven the lush oasis that it is, and allows the colony to fulfill its purpose by how it learns from Mooners’ lives together]. Mooners have a dance for grieving. Paul and his detective partner Arlo (Kadeem Hardison) try to dance it for Bella – but she won’t accept it.
Paul’s young daughter Elna (Martha Malone), on the other hand, won’t take no for an answer. She spots Bella in her room (after Bella settles in to stay with Paul’s family for a time) and persists until Bella relents. Bella allows it, but still has a resistant and dismissive demeanor. “You need the dance,” Elna tells Bella; to the young girl, that’s as true as the Earth in their sky and the breath in her body. Elna reaches for, and then catches, an imaginary force or object (I like to imagine that it’s light and hope). Like a Whirling Dervish, she spins with pure energy and ease.
"You need the dance....to remember." (screenshot by the author)
Elna reaches towards Bella with it, then brings it back to herself – in a way, uniting them. She traces the outline of Bella’s face with one hand, and then places one of Bella’s hands on her own heart. Elna walks away, but looks back at Bella once. The hardened pilot’s hand is still on her heart. She no longer repels Elna’s gift in movement – far from it. By her expression and energy in this moment, she seems profoundly touched, perhaps even overwhelmed.
Bella is witnessed, in a way that words can’t offer. Elna sees her essence, her heart. All on Moonhaven had thus far said that heart was dark, but Elna – through movement’s witnessing and connecting power – saw something different. As the show progresses, we see the young girl proven right. The wisdom of babes, indeed…and of bodies.
"Before the storm": dancing when the going gets tough
Forces are at work to disrupt the mission of Moonhaven – yet Bella, Paul, Arlo, and their allies have a plan to have a small chance at saving that mission. First, though, Paul insists that they dance; he affirms how Mooners know that they must find calm and grounding “before the storm.” He puts on a classic tune, to which he and his son Wish (Josh Tedeku) dance together.
They move with a playful call-and-response feel, a hand to a shoulder and one ducking under the other’s arm. Standing in sure footing and smoothly sliding one foot in a circle (“ronde de jambe” in ballet speak), they are seemingly improvisational and quite light-hearted. Paul invites Elna to join them. He twirls her ballroom dance-style, her turning under one of his arms. All are connected in “the dance” (as Elna calls it).
Dance connects, dance witnesses, and dance shores up fortitude and resilience – Mooners know it: deeply, truly, surely. It is essential “before the storm”, after it, and when there is no storm in the sky. It is essential always.
Moving in circles: a farewell of continuity
Some Mooners are about to leave the colony – the “First Wave” to head to Earth and teach its residents what they know about living in harmony (with each other and with their environment). These Mooners and their families dance together in farewell. They move outdoors again, in circles – to acknowledge and witness all joined in the dance.
Mooners dance a farewell to the First Wave: via Vital Thrills
Holding hands, they are connected through both skin and soul. All move with ease and joy, their physicality matching their soft smiles. Later in the dance, the people who will stay – loved ones of First Wavers – outstretch their arms to the intrepid travelers in the middle of their circles. Their bodies speak “farewell”: offering the poise and vigor to meet the challenge ahead of them.
These circles also feel like a powerful embodiment of continuity; even though these Mooners are leaving, they do so for continuation of the human race. In the ether is hope for the First Wave’s continued welfare and the success of their mission. Dusk’s gentle daylight shines upon them; the sun sets, yet we can trust in its return to nurture all life. So too do Mooners hope and trust in the continued welfare of the human race. It is their purpose – “True Lune”, as they say.
Connecting, sharing, caring for themselves, and working towards their strongest selves -- even when the going gets tough, and arguably especially then – through a shared language of movement: a utopia indeed! All of me deeply hopes that we bring this ethos into the future of our own world, our own reality and universe.
That’s a future actually steeped in the wisdom of the past, how we moved together as far back as we can tell (and across all of humanity’s myriad cultures). "The future is better", as Mooners say – or at least, it can be. I believe it to my bones: truly knowing ourselves and each other, with the help of the body’s wisdom, can put us on that path.
Paul embracing his daughter Elna, safe, while Bella looks to future threats: via Fandom
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