How I Learned to See in the Dark

It began when I was living in Springfield—a city in southwest Missouri, USA. I was working as a cook in a health food store when one of my coworkers told me about a dance studio that she’d visited.

“It’s unlike any other dance studio you’ll ever go to,” she said. “There are candles and lanterns. The room is dark and small. There are no mirrors or fluorescent lights. And she teaches you how to pole dance.”

I was immediately intrigued, but what my coworker was saying seemed counter-intuitive. How could I learn to dance if I couldn’t see myself in a mirror?

How would I know if I was doing it right?

Childhood Mirrors

I come from a background in dance performance. I was a ballet dancer as a child—standing in a line along the bar, black leotard, pink tights, small pink shoes trying desperately to move in sync. I danced for seven years, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not get my body to do exactly what the others’ did.

I stared at the mirror.

A head taller than most of my classmates, I was slow, slightly awkward. Puberty hit me before anyone else—a distended belly, budding breasts, dark hair sprouting over every inch of my Anglo-Mediterranean body—everything at odds with the lithe bodies of my classmates. What joy I had once found in dance was dwarfed by my growing attention to detail—and my growing sense of failure at being beautiful.

When I hit young adulthood, this extended into every aspect of my life: school, friendships, family drama. My life became a daily exercise in comparison, how my reflection lacked, how my body was not measuring up.

Fast forward to 25-years-old in Missouri and I was an expert in self-deprecation, disordered eating, and daily distaste for my reflection. After an injury that ended my ballet journey in my teens, dance had become something layered with pain and loss. I missed movement, but each time I’d tried to start again, I’d been unable to keep up with the choreographies. Whatever brain-body connection was required, I’d lost it.

I just didn’t think dance was available to me anymore.

So it was with a heavy dose of skepticism, but a deep hunger to return to my early love of movement, that I went to my first pole dance class.

Mirroring Myself

Just like my coworker had told me, there were no mirrors. In that particular pole studio, the emphasis was on self-expression—not appearances or performance for an audience. Technique and safety were important, but our focus was on sensation and feeling, not what we looked like.

After I had been dancing there for a year or so, my teacher introduced us to solo improv: following each day’s lesson, we would spend the final portion of the class dancing freestyle, one at a time, in front of each other.

At first, I was terrified: this was worse than watching myself dance in front of a mirror. Now, everyone else was watching me, too. But my teacher and my classmates did not judge or critique or tell me what I could have done better.

Instead, they acted as loving mirrors—reflecting encouragement and offering praise for unique self-expression. They told me how a particular spin held a lot of power or how my body made gorgeous patterns on the floor.

And, more importantly, they asked me how I felt during the dance.

The emphasis was on my internal experience: the sensations and emotions of my body. Did I like the way the song inspired me to move faster or slower? How did it feel when I tried a new combination that I’d never done in a freestyle before? Did I release and express what was inside my heart that day?

I was learning to bear witness to my own body, to see my sensed experience as just as important—if not more important—than how it looked to an outside observer.

For a young woman who hated her body, this was revolutionary. I had been raised to always view myself from the outside, how someone else might look, measure, judge. Instead, I was learning to see myself from the inside: to be a mirror for my own experience.

I also watched my classmates dance, learning to witness them as loving friends, instead of judging their abilities or style. Sameness was not important—we did not need to mold, shape, or change our movements to match each other. Instead, we just allowed our own bodies to tell our own stories. And we cheered each other on.

Navigating the Dark

Because of this, when I danced, I usually did it with my eyes closed. The lights were low, if not completely turned off, and I directed my focus inward: to the sensations of my body. I entered an altered state of consciousness, where all of my senses were heightened. I improvised—allowing my body to move with the music in whichever way I wanted, sometimes incorporating particular moves and spins, but not consciously worrying about what it looked like to an audience.

In this way, I learned to navigate the dark oblivion of introspection.

Even when I’m in a new space, and my eyes are closed, I’m able to move with all of my senses, intuitively measuring distances between my limbs and the wall or the pole. As if I can see in the dark, my body navigates through space with clarity and direction, guided by its own sensations and needs, instead of by a mirrored reflection.

I have since become fascinated with this practice of seeing in the dark: dancing through space (and its twin, moving through daily life) with self-trust and intuition.

I’ve written already about the way that experience changed my relationship with hunger and desire. But it also opened me up to a new way of seeing.

And these themes—of mirroring, of descent into darkness—have become important themes in my writing, my ceremonies, and my creative work.

Dancing with the Lights On

When I left Missouri and moved to Greece at 30, I began dancing at a more conventional pole studio in Athens. Wall-to-wall mirrors greeted me with every class. I watched myself warm up; I watched myself practice; I watched myself dance choreographies.

I’d be lying if I said it was easy to re-enter a mirrored dance world. Some days I was still critical—of my shape, of my size, of my lack of coordination. But most days I was surprised and pleased with what I saw in the mirror.

I enjoyed seeing myself in the mirror because I had learned, first, to see myself clearly in the dark.

Seeing in the Dark: A Dance Playlist

I’ve created a short dance music playlist here, inspired by this post. If you’re interested in experimenting, turn off all the lights and press play. See what kinds of things your body wants to do in the dark.