Wednesday, September 3, 2025

By Kai Dailey

At month three of our Short Wave experiment, we are settling into our new studio home (and loving it!) as we continue working to discover the essential qualities of a short ecstatic wave. 

My experience so far is that it is a blessing to attend a weekly dance that I can easily fit into my schedule. I also love how focused on the work it is. While longer dances with a larger number of attendees adds a social element and requires a greater investment in time, I experience Short Waves as a quick dance work out and personal check in. I've also discovered the music mix takes on a greater importance than with longer dance formats. If you've only got 45 minutes, what is the most important part of the wave? Warm up, peak staccato, lyrical to pull it all together? Something else?

And should the musical space be a blank canvas to bring our inner work or should it offer a message or challenge us to experience the moment differently than when we first arrived? In a two and a half hour wave, there is time to create many experiences and dimensions in real time. But by focusing and condensing practice into less than an hour, the creative choices narrow and become deliberate. Options that may have otherwise been improvised and explored in a longer dance are cut off. Yet this limitation is what I find refreshing in its simplicity. I dance. I reflect. I continue with my Saturday.

Even though the format is simple, I've found that creating a mix is not. How is a successful Short Wave measured? Feedback from dancers opens a dialog that makes clear that dance is different for everyone and yet a "sucessful" dance also has an resonate quality for most people in attendance. 

I've been experimenting with basic qualities of a Short Wave mix that facilitates ecstatic floor time but have yet to define these in depth:

• invitation to movement (danceable quality?)

• message (direct or indirect?)

• surprises - challenge

• facilitates self-reflection or self-connection

• wave (journey - emotional - mood)

• flow of mix

• immersion

Do all of these qualities need to be present in every mix? Or is it good enough within the context of regular weekly practice that some or most of these are present, while others make an appearance at regular intervals week to week? 

For example, I would expect that some quality of "danceability" be present in a mix, though moving ones body to sound is what I mean by dance. As esctatic dancers, we are sometimes moved to linger in a long sigh or stretch or gentle sway or to lay upon the floor. So perhaps it is the invitation to movement rather than dancibility that all mixes must possess, as one can be called to move through spoken word as well as through music.  

I've no interest in cultivating a formula just a better understanding of my own experience and the qualities that make a Short Wave beneficial for others. Each week brings new ideas and depth to these questions.

Share your ideas or feedback at kai@thesacredcrane.org.