Si No Te Hubieras Ido by Marco Antonio Solis
Even if you’re not a contemporary dancer, sometimes it’s best to dance in a sad way, to groove out your emotions, a form of ecstatic, personal expression that can be felt but not understood. The first archaeological proof of dance comes from a ten-thousand-year-old cave painting in India depicting figures in movement in what appears to be a drum ceremony, a ritual attempt to reach a joyous state of trance, a desire to grasp a dimension that exists outside of the material world. Dance is catharsis, to say the least.
An anonymous person posted on the question and answer website, Quora: Do people dance when they are sad? A woman named Marian Gutierrez answered that yes, in fact, she does, ‘to escape a little bit from reality' and dance the sadness away from her mind. Someone named Bryan Regalado, whose bio states that he ‘studies emotions and understands emotions,’ answered that he recently learned to let go while dancing, that this helps him unlock the emotions he doesn’t have access to while sedentary, but it’s different than exercise, he adds. ‘The pure connection with the music alone allows for a mentally transcendent experience that cannot be found through any other mode of movement. For magic to occur, it has to be only but a song and I together in a room.’ Sometimes, Bryan says, he even gets euphoric. ‘I dance to feel. Whatever comes along with it is just fine by me.’
Raphael Alexis says that dance is ‘great to get shit out of your system’ and to ‘shed a few tears,’ while a fellow named Seth Franqui says that dance is only good if you’re ‘100 percent committed to it. You need to have the passion or you will fail’—though that may be a bit extreme, perhaps even leading to more sadness than before. Dancing is a fantastic form of therapy, but it's not unusual for it to be taken too far. Danses Macabres, from the middle ages, was a dance ritual designed as a memento mori, thought to protect its participants from deadly disease, though the hysteria and long duration of these dances would often lead to death by exhaustion. I suppose nothing should be taken too seriously.
In the Iliad, Homer describes Choreia, an ancient Greek mystical circle dance accompanied by singing and chanting thought to bring about involuntary movements that would cure its participants of unwanted evil spirits, such can be the pleasures and benefits of dancing in a communal setting. According to an article from Chartwell, a chain of retirement residencies in Canada, dancing can help your heart, improve posture and flexibility, reduce pain and stiffness, lift your mood, and even, by building balance in the hips, prevent falls. Sounds pretty good to me.
It seems the answer to the question is an overwhelming yes, people do dance when they are sad, melancholic, depressed, dejected, downcast, and miserable, and yes, dancing, alone, with friends, lovers, or family, can and will most probably help whatever mental ailment someone’s enduring. Follow the rhythm, and do it with focus. If you're so silly to believe you don’t have rhythm—no problem, no worries; your inner demons will surely find it.