The conceptual basis of Biodanza comes from a meditation about life, from the desire to reborn out of our broken gestures, from
our empty and sterile repression structure. And certainly from love nostalgia.
The first cognitive contact with the world, before the speech, is the knowledge given by movement. Therefore the dance is a
way to be-in-the world, the expression of the organic unity of man with the universe. The notion of dance as integrative
kinaesthesia is very old and across the history it has a lot of cultural expressions, like primitive and orphic dances, tantric
ceremonies and the Sufism rotary dances. The poet Jala-od-Din Rumi (XIII century) said:
“Oh day! Raise… the atoms dance, the souls in ecstasy dance, the sky, because of this being, dance.
I will whisper in your ear where the dance is leading to. Listen, all the atoms that are in the air and in the desert are in love like us and each of them, happy or sad, is lit by the sun of the unconditioned soul.”
A Biodanza session is an invitation to participate to this Cosmic Dance which is described by the prophet. This claim results to be
amazing in the melancholic socio-political landscape of our times.
In a world of genocide and hunger, torture and treasons, in a world of endless abandonment, how can we start dancing? It
seems a contradiction.
In spite of this, my proposal does not consist only in a dance, but also in the activation of affective and communicative potentials
through special dances, which aim is to connect ourselves to the others and to the nature.
And then, how could we change the world without changing ourselves?
The transformation made by Biodanza is not only a values reformulation, it’s a real cultural change, an affective learning, limbico
ipotalamica alteration.
During this century, the occidental mind deformity reached its peak with the biggest attempts against human life that history has
ever known. The ego pathology became stronger, reaching diseases never seen before. State establishments jointed to political
and educational ideologies incentivize this pathology. Moreover, many contemporary thinkers and intellectuals contribute to this
large process of life treason.
Therefore, our action is an open transgression of contemporary culture values and of the alienation dictates of the consumption
society and totalitarian ideologies.
The failure of social revolutions is caused by the fact that people starting them haven’t made personal evolutive process. Social
transformation can reach the success beginning from health, not from neurosis and resentment. In a different way, the social
exchanges will merely substitute a pathology with another one.
The biodanza aim is to restore in the human being the original link with the shape, as a biological whole. This starting point is
necessary to survive.
Biodanza finds its inspiration in the most primitive origins of the dance. It’s important to clarify that dance, in an original sense, is a vivencial moment. Many people link the idea of dance to the performance of “ballet”. This is a formal view of the dance.
Dance is a deep movement born from the most visceral part of man. It’s a life movement, it’s a biological rhythm, the heart and breathing one, an impulse of connexion to the species, it’s an intimacy movement.
I believe in organic dance, that can answer to movement models that originate life. We searched this coherence and we found it: generative positions, musical harmony between human beings, deep resonance with micro and macrocosm. Our purpose is to elucidate this movement forms for a real bond.
We will revive from the chaos of our time only if our movements restore their binding sense.
So, we participate to a different view. We have access to a new way of living, arousing our assorted sensibility.
We are alone in the middle of a collectivist chaos.
There’s the way of being absent in all our presence. If we don’t look at, we don’t listen to, we don’t touch the other, we deprive
him of his identity. We don’t see in himself a person. We are with him but we ignore him. This disqualification, consciously or
unconsciously made, has a terroristic sense that includes all the pathologies of Ego.
Celebrating the presence of the other, exalting it for the essential charme of the meeting is in this case the only healthy
possibility. Tenderness: quality of a presence that gives a real presence.
Thing we need to live is an intimate and transcendent feeling, of a very pleasant association and of stimulating discourse. In
these natural needs we put our aims.
We know that the essential consistency can’t come from an ideology, but it comes from the Vivencias in action. Our end is
activation of deep harmonizing vivencias, through the dance and the group communication exercises.
Rolando Toro Araneda