Most Greek folk dances are village dances that the whole village dances together. There is a leader (or several), traditionally men, after whom a line forms. All people hold hands, which helps ensure connection. Each person is responsible for at minimum going in the same direction as the line – adding the same steps is bonus, imo. More experienced dancers – those who know the steps – are also aware of what is going on with the line. They ensure the line remains a circle, no one’s arms get stretched too much, etc. When a line gels, it’s an amazing experience: It feels like everyone is an individual and there is something larger than that. That’s called emergence in science: The parts form a whole that is more than just the sum of the parts.
This plays out in various ways while dancing. For example, last night, during one of the dances, i could sense something was off when i was trying to follow the leader’s steps – and looked up the line to find that there was someone else leading! The line had split and the new leader was doing different steps. The people closest to him were following him, creating the sense of confusion i had picked up… I quickly let people next to me know we had a new leader – and with relief they switched to the new steps, too. Things gelled again.
It is this interplay between individual and community that i am longing for. That we each are responsible for our own steps (requests) and that we each hold each other, help each other with the steps (follow up on requests with questions rather than ignore them, reach out to people to ask if they want empathy rather than waiting for them to ask for it). Basically, we are responsible for ourselves and for the group, which thus becomes a community.
Another metaphor that captures what i am longing for comes from another art form: Singing in a choir. Daniel Siegel uses that in one of his videos… He uses it as an example of the experience of integration in this video starting at about 37:00 in chapter 11. A fully integrated choir consists of singers who know what they are singing and are attuned to the rest of the choir, adjusting the pitch, tempo, etc as necessary. Again, this is emergence – something larger than the collection of the parts is created by the interdependent attunement.
My guess is that most of us have trouble understanding this idea of a community because almost none of us have experienced it. What gets in the way of our understanding is cultural trauma from the messages that suggest that we should be independent and only complete self-reliance will lead to happiness. As
Tara Brach Brené Brown put it in one of her talks: Our self-worth is mirrored by the community we feel belonging in. We belong only where we are embraced for who we are. And we bring ourselves to the places where we feel we belong.
Community is a reflection of our interdependence. It is not a collection of individuals. It is an emergent property, a web of individuals who hold each other (and, yes, sometimes fail to, and then make that a communal issue).