How Social Dance Can Benefit Your Training—and Your Humanity

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing struggle with systemic racism have shaken the dance world. Now more than ever, connection, empathy, and activism must be cultivated in dance settings. And one of the best ways to do that is through social dance forms, which come out of rich and diverse cultural traditions. "It's one of the ways we heal the discrimination, the injustice, the fear," Abdiel Jacobsen, former principal with Martha Graham Dance Company, says of his social dance experience. Here's how social dance can benefit studio dancers as both artists and humans.