We Need Dance!
Right now we need to feel good and move for change more than ever, therefore I’m taking on a personal challenge to dance every day in December and inviting you to join in, too!
We will moved mindfully and joyfully through the winter holidays and into 2025 and you may choose to take the challenge and repeat as desired at any time of year.
In my initial invitation to the challenge, I provided a variety of prompts and ideas to spark daily dances and I used these myself as well as taking inspiration from various locations in my life, dancing, teaching, and coaching contexts, special events.
Posting clips from my explorations on social media (TikTok, where I shared my Alphabet Superset Micro Choreo Videos, and Instagram) provided accountability and visibility. Now that the month of daily sharing is done, I created a compilation on YouTube set to a piece of music from the library there, “Wolf Moon” (which was this week!) by Unicorn Heads:
31 Days of Dancing
Here are each of the daily dance sketches I shared to social media during the month of December with their original musical pairings:
Week 1
Day 1 Tango practice with Ela in the kitchen
Day 2 Playing before teaching ballet at Tanzraum
Day 3 Embrace, Release, Glow prompts from #createdecember on my yoga mat in the living room
Day 4 Soutenu spin around the kitchen
Day 5 Fall Leaf Prop Improv at Tanzraum
Day 6 Live at Eigelstein Weihnachtsmarkt schaukeln (sp?) with a band
Day 7 Dream, Notice, Understand #createdecember After Saturday chores, interpretive dance on the stairs…
Day 8 Ohne das Stauen band at Atelier Zoozmann @artverwandt
Week 2
Day 9 One hand at home
Day 10 Swirling like a snowflake at Tanzraum
Day 11 Upper-Body Snow at home
Day 12 Sugarplum fairy fun at Tanzraum
Day 13 found freezing temperatures in Cologne and me snuggling in the flannel of my bed/office/studio…Comfort, Rest, Indulge #createdecember
Day 14 Stairway study
Day 15 Santa’s coming!
Week 3
Day 16 Getting mean with the Grinch at Tanzraum
Day 17 Yoga dancing at home
Day 18 Ballet grand battements giving me fever in the kitchen dance studio
Day 19 Passes to rock around the Christmas tree on my last day of in-studio classes of the year!
Day 20 Friday night foam roller fun in the living room
Day 21 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy party
Day 22 Cozy day at my house
Week 4
Day 23 Taking a little Mirliton promenade on Christmas Eve eve
Day 24 Merry Jingle Bells at the train station Christmas Eve
Day 25 Feliz Navidad! Sliding into Christmas in front of Petra’s tree
Day 26 Ho ho ho on the second day of Christmas at Reiner’s library
Day 27 Back on the foam roller leg beats in the air to “The Muppet Show”
Day 28 Glittery Christmas present improv with my new magic wand (Benu Briolette magenta frost fountain pen)
Day 29 What are you doing New Year’s Eve? at the doorway
(part of Week 1 of 2025!)
Day 30 New Year’s Eve Eve back at my house
Day 31 Celebrating New Year’s with sparklers and fireworks
Impact/Learnings of Daily Dancing
Here are some of the insights I gained personally from creating and participating in Dance Daily December in 2024:
1. Every single day can be a lot
However modest the daily actions may be–in this case simply moving mindfully for a few moments (though some days part of hours of dancing and teaching), capturing a clip, and sharing it–to commit to any action every single day for a period of time is quite an undertaking! During the holiday season and finishing the year even more so.
Not trying to scare you off, just normalize that though we might “just” be taking on small little minimal challenge each day, establishing a consistent practice of any kind is no cake walk! Life loves to throw obstacles in the way, so overcoming them is part of the creative process here.
2. You must commit to overcoming obstacles
Right away on Day 1 I had planned to be at Tango class at Tanzschule Tanzraum, but didn’t get out the door in time and the train was running late, such that we would be too tardy to be acceptable to us. But Ela and I had intended to review together what we had learned earlier in the year before year’s end, and I was (God willing) 100 percent going to dance and capture it for my Dance Daily December challenge, so we practiced in the kitchen!
3. Staring is the hardest, overcoming inertia
Getting started is always the hardest part (no matter what I want to do or create and how much I love it!), but the body-moving, mood-boosting, thought-provoking, and creatively inspirational consequences are well worth the effort.
4. Creative dance is good for you
I’m always happier and healthier while dancing, whether to wallow and process whatever emotion or stress I’m experiencing or to escape it by fully engaging in the moment. Dancing makes me fully present to the space and surroundings, my own body, and my improvisational or choreographic intention.
The result of regular engagement in such practices is heightened awareness, reflective practice, expanded sense of possibility and problem-solving, impacts in other areas of life, and gradually contributing to a larger body of learning and work among many others. What benefits do you notice when you’re engaging in creativity and dance on a regular basis?
5. Having prompts to spark inspiration helps
On days when I didn’t have a dance or movement class to teach or participate in, I used various impulses I provided in my original invitation email and Get Down Daily 5-day dance challenge as well as prompts from the #createdecember, a challenge from Heather Mattern and Documented Journey aimed at visual artists in various media but also applicable to dance and all artforms.
A daily dance ritual and practice of recording sketches from it helps me notice my defaults, tendencies, favorites in movement. I can see what looks good, feels good, doesn’t quite fit, is more of an internal process of learning or really sings from the audience’s point of view. All valuable information to my ongoing artistic growth and development of my voice and choreographies!
6. Creative constraints are your friends
Constraints of space/frame, brief time, low budget production values generated specific areas of innovation. Some choices were made for me: the video equipment, spaces I had access to, musical accompaniment access and approach to sound. Others had a few possibilities to choose from: how far away to stand and what part of the dancing body to place in the frame, landscape or portrait format for capture (did both depending on various factors, including whether I would use footage for other applications in the future such as YouTube videos (like my Leaf and Swirling Snowflake Improvisations) or just for social media where vertical is preferred. Where exactly to dance, when during the day, in what technique or style?
Making art is a balance of working withing our own restrictions and transcending them to express our truth and potentially connect with others.
7. What you create & share has an impact on others
Unexpected people are following my dancing! I learned that I have followers and fans far away as well as right here in Cologne, and they let me know that they were watching and enjoying my daily dances.
Engaging in this daily challenge helped with follow-through on commitment to learning new techniques and styles, getting out of my comfort zone.
It is vulnerable and awkward to share transparently my creative explorations in real time, the hits and misses, the very process of creation itself, but when others do so it inspires me so greatly that I am moved to do the same.
Though I’ve been sharing videos on YouTube and social media for over five years, it can still be difficult not to watch back and edit with a critical, perfectionistic eye, but I can see my own joy in the footage, a good indication of what it is like to be in my classes and what boons you too might receive from the practice.
May my imperfect efforts provide the same welcoming doorway for you to make your mark!
Keep Dancing Through Life
I hope you will join me to keep dancing and making art on a regular basis and witness the transformation that a mindful movement and creative dance practice can cause in your life!
Dance at home, in your car, in a class in-studio or online, in the club… just dance and let me know how I can support you in discovering what moves you. It doesn’t have to be extraordinary or even good, but it just might be!
Resources for Further Exploration
- 5 Ways to Get Down Daily – how to build a habit of creative dance Article is a recap of my 5-Day “Get Down Daily” Dance Challenge on Instagram
- Delicious Dancey Digest for International Dance Day & National Dance Week Article with loads of my dance goodies published over the years
- Charming Chosen Challenges – creative ways to try out or jumpstart a habit Article presents a variety of inspiring challenges to bring out the artist in you
- Alphabet Superset Creative Challenge Recap 2023-2024: Learning from Filming 26 Micro Video Choreos on TikTok A-Z Article details one of the challenges I completed this year where I shared approximately-weekly dance sketches, preparing me for this daily challenge
- Joyful Movement & Creative Living with Life Coach Jolynne Anderson Article
- Subscribe to my email newsletter to receive creative living inspiration weekly
Questions for Reflection
- What is your favorite dance style or technique?
- Which type of dance or movement haven’t you tried yet that you’d like to sample?
- What creative practices do most enjoy?
- How could a mindful movement or creative dance enhance your life?
- What do you dream of creating?
Thank you for reading, for being, and for dancing with me, in spirit or in fact.
Take care of yourself, keep moving mindfully, and let me know how I can be of service!
Blythe Stephens, MFA & Bliss Catalyst
they/them or she/her
Creator of A Blythe Coach @ablythecoach
helping multi-passionate creatives
dance through difficulty
DISCLAIMER: A Blythe Coach recommends that you consult your physician regarding the applicability of any recommendations and follow all safety instructions before beginning any exercise program. When participating in any exercise or exercise program, there is the possibility of physical injury. If you engage in this exercise or exercise program, you agree that you do so at your own risk, are voluntarily participating in these activities, assume all risk of injury to yourself.