Dance, movement set creative expression free

To Stephanie Lindsay, the old saying “shake it off” has a lot of merit.

“As a young child, I was aware that after moving expressively I always somehow felt better. I thought everyone danced their anger, love and grief,” she said. So, when Lindsay falls, a voice inside her head reminds her to shake it off, and she dances.

Lindsay’s dance, a mix of classical and modern, is filled with visible emotions, light on her feet one moment and heavy the next. Her movements are universal, from open reaching hands to clenched fists, she tells stories.

“Primitive peoples used movement, singing, enacting stories and drawing to communicate and heal,” she said, “Ancient societies found that these ways of expression helped them cope with their fears, disappointments and triumphs. They found themselves moved and changed through participating in rituals that incorporated dance, music and drama. This is because the arts respond to human suffering in ways that can effect transformation.”

Lindsay, who lives in Spokane Valley, grew up in Montana and moved to the Spokane area in 1985. She is a graduate of the Tamalpa Institute, an expressive arts training program in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her earliest dance and theater training at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Montana and a master’s from the University of Arizona. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Gonzaga University’s interdisciplinary program of leadership studies. For nearly 25 years, Lindsay has been opening others to dance and movement. To understand what she does, turn on some music and dance, grab a piece of paper and some crayons and write, draw and dance some more.

“She has a way of pulling out therapy without prying through movement and drawing. Things come out,” said Natalie Gauvin, a student of Lindsay’s. “She never asks what you’re thinking or why you’re crying because sometimes you do cry. It’s like digging deeper into yourself.”

Another student, Arika Whiteaker, agreed, “Expression is therapeutic. It’s freeing. It’s self-discovery through movement.”

Gauvin teaches yoga and dance, and Whiteaker teaches belly dancing. Both gain a lot of insight through Lindsay’s workshops. “Dance and other forms of art are a path to shake off the physical world and get into the spiritual,” Gauvin explained, “I am not saying that all of life’s challenges can be solved by making a dance or a painting, but that there is nothing to be lost by navigating the spirit, only gain.”

Lindsay is a cheerleader for navigating the spirit through expression. She co-founded Namasté Modern Dance Theatre and the Inland Northwest Dance Association and founded the children’s dance company, Imagination Dance Theatre. She has served on area boards that focus on the arts, is president of the Graduate Student Association at Gonzaga University, and director of Souls of Our Feet, an expressive arts institute.

Said Lindsay: “Creative expression emerges naturally out of being human. We are all capable of moving, making art, and writing creatively. Our bodies are our first teachers, and movement is our first language. When individuals explore the issues in their lives experientially through the arts, new ways of perceiving themselves and the world emerge.”