Dance and Communication by Ian McKenzie

On Wednesday I watched a young couple’s final private dance lesson before their forthcoming wedding next Saturday.

This slow romantic dance was immediately followed by a very lively Mambo. The dancing couple through this second dance said to me the observer, “yes, we love each other dearly and we are really going to have fun and enjoy our lives together”.

I have taught tertiary courses on communication, and have used the following scenarios to demonstrate to students that communication is not just about verbalisations and the written word.

“OK, pair up and when I say ‘go’, I want you to maintain eye contact with each other for thirty seconds only, but don’t communicate anything.” We would then discuss this scenario as a class and generally the consensus would be that the eyes are very important in the communication process. And, of course they are.

A second scenario I sometimes used was to get one of the students to walk outside the classroom and to then come in and be very careful not to even fleetingly give eye contact to anyone in the room. This student had been told not to communicate anything to anyone.