Tiny (Ecstatic) Dancer
My first stop after being in isolation for two weeks was, naturally, to go to a music festival.
My first stop after being in isolation for two weeks from Covid and pneumonia was, naturally, to go to a music festival.
Initially, this was not my plan. I thought I would find a quiet place by the beach and slowly readjust. But then, we landed in the airport and I saw the posters for Bali Spirit Festival. It only happened once a year, and I had already known about it. It was, in fact, a big part of the reason I had chosen to come back to Bali at this time. Now it was May, and I was here and finally feeling well enough the very weekend it was starting. I couldn’t not go.
So, off I headed back to Ubud, where the festival took place. I first heard about it from a woman I met named Kumi. She was a very talented drum circle facilitator based in Hong Kong and we met at Shambala, a festival in Thailand. One afternoon in mid February, a group of us were sitting in the grass by the river in Chang Dao.
I told Kumi how I wanted to be more involved in wellness through writing somehow, I just wasn’t sure what that looked like yet. When she asked what my plans were for the next few months, I told her I just knew I wanted to eventually return to Bali. Which is how she told me about the Bali Spirit Festival. Then I asked her where I should go to dance, like in the drum circles she facilitated, and she told me to find a woman named Malaika Darville.
When I arrived back in Bali at the end of March, the first thing I did was contact Malaika. But she told me she was out of the country, and would not be in Bali until May. And now it was May, the festival was happening, and Malaika was facilitating a dance there. I found a place to sleep for the night, and in the morning I would head to the festival.
But when I woke up, I could barely move. I had done something weird to my back, and whether it was from stress or how I had slept, all I knew was I could barely stand straight. I had never experienced anything like this, and was in excruciating pain, but was determined to go. I had made it all the way from the Komodo islands. I was tired of not feeling well. But I also felt determined to meet Malaika. I don’t know why I felt so compelled to meet her, but it had been in the back of my mind since February, and everything in me wanted to go. It’s hard to describe, but there are certain moments on my trip where I felt like for some inexplicable but strong reason, I just had to meet a person or go somewhere that I felt called to visit, and it would lead me to where I was meant to go. Maybe it wasn’t the final destination, but it was an important stepping stone. That’s what meeting Malaika felt like to me.
After a few hours of rest, I felt slightly better. Not enough to dance, but at least I was in less pain. I showed up to the festival, and found out tickets were sold out for the day. Defeated, I walked to a cafe down the street. I wondered if I was forcing being in Bali again. When I was here in January, everything seemed to flow so effortlessly. Now, this past month, it all felt exhausting, like nothing was going quite right.
Just then, I noticed the woman next to me at the cafe was wearing a festival band. I asked her how it was, and she told me she was “done with her healing for the day” and was headed home. I asked her if I use her wristband for the rest of the day since she wasn’t using it, and she handed it over.
A few minutes later. I found myself at Malaika’s dance circle. I tried my best to join in, but my back was still killing me, so eventually I just went to sit on the side and watched. I didn’t want to push myself. I was just glad I made it. Still, the energy was incredible. I loved the way she was able to bring the room together. I was able to feel the joy even when I couldn’t participate.
Afterwards, I introduced myself since we had texted before when I tried to meet her in March. We spoke and she told me how she was leading a dance retreat in a few days in northern Bali. It was called Elemental Embodiment Immersion, and there were two spots left. Was I interested?
I got more information and read a bit about it. It was part of a larger program to train as an ecstatic dance DJ, but this particular segment would “prepare you for the next evolution in your life's journey to reclaim your personal power. Embody your natural aliveness and get grounded in a way that is effortless- the way of the heart!”
While that all sounded great, even though I still wasn’t sure what it meant, I told her I wasn’t sure. My back was still hurting, I had just gotten out of the hospital - I didn’t know if an ecstatic dance retreat was the right move. But more than all that, I also felt… silly. I wasn’t a dancer. Did I really need to go on this retreat? As I read on about it, it did sound incredible. We would wake up at sunrise each morning, meditate and dance by the ocean. These were all of my favorite things. But still, it felt indulgent and unnecessary. I tried to talk myself out of it.
Before I continue, I thought I’d explain a little about ecstatic dance for those who don’t know what it is, or have never experienced it. It usually lasts an hour and a half, and while it feels like a mini festival, you don’t drink or do any drugs. You can’t wear shoes, and talking or using your phone isn’t allowed. Instead, you’re meant to communicate with others through movement, and practice being as present as possible. Some dances I’ve been to begin with the DJ asking dancers to walk around for the first song, just smiling and making eye contact with strangers.
Doing something like this for the first time can be really scary for people. It takes you completely outside of your comfort zone, and can be hard to know how to move. But the best way I can describe it is everyone just dancing purely for themselves, and no one else. It’s the kind of carefree dancing you would do if you’re alone in your room, but everyone else is dancing that way, too. You can interact with other people, or you can spend an entire dance on your own. There’s no right way to do it, as long as you feel present and free and in your body.
Some could say we’ve been dancing this way since Grecian times, where devotees would worship the Greek God Dionysus through dance to achieve a communion with divinity.
More recently, others will say the movement began with Gabrielle Roth, who decided to combine dance with therapy in the 1970s at the Esalen Institute in California. Her dance format, 5Rythmns, consists of five sections and this structure creates the form of the dance: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Others will say it was further developed in 2001 by Max Fathom on the Big Island of Hawaii. But now these dances are always evolving, and held all over the world.
The first time I tried ecstatic dance, it was an accident. I was at Envision, a music festival in Uvita, Costa Rica, in February 2020. It was the middle of the day, and I remember being drawn to this tent of people dancing. I was with my friend Amanda, and while it took a while for me to let go and feel comfortable, soon I felt more free than I ever had in my entire life. People were dancing in ways I had never seen before. They were throwing themselves to the ground, crawling through the mud. (We were also in the jungle and it had rained the night before). But I remember how primal it felt. Every move was instinctual, not forced. You weren’t watching how others were dancing or trying to mimic anyone - just dancing in the way that felt natural for your body. I was in awe watching everyone around me, and shocked at how it made me feel. When the dance ended and we walked away, Amanda smiled. “I have never seen you that happy.”
I thought about that moment a lot. I longed to recreate that feeling again, but wasn’t sure how. Then, almost three years later, Amanda took me to another ecstatic dance. This time it was held in a gym in Bushwick on a Thursday evening in early December. A month before I would leave for Bali. Once again, I left feeling exhilarated. I wrote down a note to myself to find more dances like this, but I was going out of town soon. I searched to see if there was any ecstatic dance in Bali, and saw one place that offered it at Yoga Barn, a studio in Ubud. This is actually how I decided to go to Ubud back in January. Soon, I’d find out that ecstatic dance was huge there. If you wanted, you could do ecstatic dance every single day. Some people did.
But at this point, I had tried ecstatic dance a total of three times. All I knew was I loved it every time I tried it. Still, was I ready for an entire week of it?
I went back home to rest, and the next day returned to the festival feeling much better. I was also there to see my friend Jess, who I had met back in January in Bali.
She lived in Northern California, and though we only spent a few days together in January, we kept in touch over the past few months. Now she was back again, this time hopefully to move to Bali. It still shocked me that she had gone home and back, and here we were, meeting again in the same place, as if no time had passed. But of course, that wasn’t true. And though it had been four months, I didn’t feel like the same person she had met then. She agreed, something had shifted. It felt good to catch up, to see a familiar face. But also to have someone else confirm that it wasn’t just me that could sense this change, she could feel it as well.
The next day, we went to an ecstatic dance set in the afternoon for a DJ she really liked, Di.Rhythm. I was hesitant at first because my back was still in some pain, but when I got there, it felt transformative. It was the kind of music and dancing that makes you forget where you are. He would combine his music with drumming as well, and you could feel everyone in the crowd was present and in their bodies. At a certain point, Malaika got on stage with him and started dancing. They were both amazing to watch. After that, I decided I would do the dance retreat. I found her afterwards and signed up. It would start in four days.
On the last day of the festival, I went to one final ecstatic dance. It was at night, and more intimate in a small tea temple. While during the day the music tended to be more upbeat, this set was a lot darker than what I was used to. Within minutes, I found myself dancing with a man, and we mirrored each others movements. We danced for over an hour without speaking, until finally it had ended and we went to go sit in the grass and introduce ourselves. His name was Dani, and he was from Barcelona. He was a documentary filmmaker, and traveling to meet people originally from the Catalan region all over the world. He had just been in China and Vietnam, and after he was done with his interviews in Indonesia, he would leave for Australia in a week.
We hit it off right away, and spent the next few days together until we had to part ways. He was leaving for a different part of Bali for one last interview, and I had my dance retreat. One day, I asked him if I could go to Australia with him. When he first told me was going, I felt a pang of jealousy. I had been thinking a lot about going to Australia since being in Bali. It was 5 hours away, which was considerably less than the 23 hours from New York. But also I had been there nine years ago as a student in a Melbourne. I was curious to go back again and see what it was like.
However, another part of me was exhausted from traveling and the idea of going to another country alone felt daunting. Maybe if I went with this guy I liked that I had just met dancing at a festival (yes, ok, I just heard myself), it wouldn’t be so bad. But after a few minutes of dead silence, he told me how he did not think it was a good idea. He started listing the reasons; he liked to travel alone, he would be moving around every two days for work, it would not be enjoyable for me. But I stopped him. I understood the proposition was definitely crazy, and knew deep down it didn’t make sense. I think I just really wanted to go to Australia but was too afraid to go on my own.
A few days later, we parted ways and agreed to keep in touch. I shared a car with three other people going to the retreat. They had all traveled here to Bali just for this. One was a mother and massage therapist from Australia, another was a woman from Poland who told me she has sat with ayahuasca twice daily for two months straight in Peru until the shamans told her she “had nothing more to learn,” and the third was a guy from Florida who quit his software job to travel.
When we arrived, I started having my doubts. I was the youngest one there, except for an Australian girl named Jasmine a few years younger than me, but she was assisting Malaika with the retreat. I always go into everything I do with an open mind, but there was a strange, intense energy when I got there.
Everyone seemed to be a facilitator in some capacity - they were all experienced in breath work, bodywork, or tantra. I was just there to dance by the ocean and have a nice time after almost losing my mind on the Komodo islands, and feeling a little out of my depth. After Malaika welcomed us, she announced they would be collecting our phones. We wouldn’t have them for the rest of the week.
I snuck off and considered making a break for it. I called Dani and told him I was going to leave. I didn’t feel comfortable there, there was no one I connected with. It was all a big mistake. But when I hung up with him and told Malaika I would be leaving, she just looked at me. “But you’re all the way here. Is this a pattern of yours? It’s common to try and run when you’re uncomfortable. But I’ll just ask you to sit with it, and see how it feels.” I knew she getting inside my head, but also, she wasn’t totally wrong.
Back in February, when I stayed with the monks in Thailand, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my whole trip. I can say that now, but when I was there, I also tried to leave. Many times. I didn’t feel comfortable there, and thought - what am I doing staying at this monastery, when I could be off having a good time? Don’t most people come to Thailand to party? What is wrong with me? Every day I booked a bus ticket for myself, and when it was finally time to go, I couldn’t leave.
In the end, I wish I had stayed longer. But I can now recognize that when I am scared or uncomfortable, my first reaction is to run (or book a bus ticket, whatever is faster). Partly because I wanted to test if this was true about myself, and partly because I was exhausted from the drive and didn’t have it in me to leave and find a new place to sleep, I gave her my phone and told her I’d stay the night. I was all the way there, I might as well commit to it.
I’m going to write more on this experience, but thought I’d break it up, so the next part will be coming soon! Thank you, as always, for reading!
Love,
Julia