It’s a great time of year to think about giving, and when it comes to dance, giving is everything.
Call it the law of karma or what goes around, comes around. However you phrase it, you can get anything you want in life as long as you help others get what they want first.
But not by letting people take advantage of you. Author Adam Grant, in his book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, shows how “givers” prosper in the workplace – not by taking on coworkers’ grunt work, but by how we interact with, and are mindful of, others.
Teaching dance is no stranger to this. Dance is all about mindfulness, awareness, being in sync with another person. Whether you are a dance teacher, a dance partner, or a dancer yourself, you don’t move to the music in a bubble.
At our in-studio dance competitions, the crowd goes wild for every little move – which supports the person performing and increases their confidence and sense of belonging. And the cheering is genuine. It’s a true focus-on-others environment, even when we are competing.
Karma, the Sanskrit word for action, is akin to Newton’s law of “every action must have a reaction.” One thing begets another. What we do comes back to us. Our actions, our words, even our thoughts, according to the Law of Karma, come back to us.
Think about how this plays out in dance. You’re off-beat, you step on toes – this halts the flow of your choreography. Or, you are conscious of your partner, in tune with the beat of the music, and you almost effortlessly glide across the floor, in step with the person beside you, in flow with the moment.
The act of giving is an essential part of dance. In our studios, and on every dance floor, givers gain.