Riding the Wave of Intensity

“Riding the wave of intensity” is a paper about flow and dance. It is based on a written assignment about my teaching practice at the Ingrid Jespersen School in Copenhagen, where I taught a group of 20 youngsters from 12–13 years of age. In my work as a dancer and teacher I have always been interested in a state of being in which you are completely focused and concentrated. The liberating, self-forgetful feeling fills your body and this activity is all that matters. I became aware of this state particularly during this teaching practice. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes this state as flow in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience from 1990. My motivation for writing this paper is to share my experience about flow and dance and furthermore to give concrete inspiration on how to achieve flow in dance classes.