From dancer to human

Dayita Nereyeth was invited to speak at a keynote ‘campfire’ event at the Alexander Technique Congress in Berlin in August 2022. This is a written version of the talk. A recording of the presentation, filmed by an audience member, is available here:

There are many ways in which my life has changed since I started using the Alexander Technique, but perhaps the biggest one has been my transformation from dancer to human. My first experience of the Alexander Technique was in 2014, in a college class for dance majors.

At first, I dismissed the technique as too easy and not what a real dancer needed. Lying down and quietly directing sounded like nonsense when all I knew was crunches, push ups, leg lifts, and extreme stretching. Still, I kept coming back to it because I had the problem of a chronic stiff neck, and since the Alexander Technique seemed to begin with the neck, I thought that maybe I should explore it. I figured that if nothing else, it might improve my dancing, and that’s all I ever really wanted.

I had a few stops and starts with the technique before I got deeply immersed in 2018. To unpack my internal world using the Alexander Technique, I went through directed activities and games, wrote letters to versions of myself from the past to acknowledge and release traumas (through a project I call Notes to Self), and read books and articles written by AT teachers past and present.

While slowly observing and unravelling my various perfectionist dancer habits and tensions, I experienced deep panic at the idea of letting go of decades of holding, gripping, and squeezing. Among other things, I had strongly pulled my stomach in, pulled the arches of my feet up, pulled my ears to the ceiling, and totally collapsed/slouched when I wasn’t dancing. I also carried my tensions into my entire life rather than leaving them in the dance studio.

But I took small steps with the Alexander Technique and, after the initial uncertainty subsided, I found that underneath all my tensions and patterns, there was a person I had hidden away for many years. I didn’t have a clue who this person was – who I was without dance. But it turns out I could sing, read, write, brew kombucha, dance with more ease and flow, fall and be okay with it, enjoy time off from dancing, try and fail miserably at gardening, and play the ukulele.

In discovering myself, my Alexander Technique practice spilled over into all aspects of my life, not just dance, and I did many things I never dreamed I would do – things that didn’t have a predetermined end in sight. I moved away from the rigidities of classical ballet and delved into improvisation, I started choreographing my own work, I chose to wear looser clothes, I shaved my head, and I started to accept my whole self rather than hating the set of inadequate parts I wished I could exchange for better models.

The technique gave me the confidence to embrace my creative voice and take up space, when I had grown up with the idea that dancers were seen, and not heard. In fact, if I had been asked to present at the Alexander Technique Congress a few years ago, I would probably have declined because I didn’t believe I could speak in public.

The effect of the technique on my life has been pretty profound, and in addition to wanting to dive further into it, I’m keen for it to spread throughout India, where I live. It was not lost on me that I was one of just a handful of people at the Congress who wasn’t white. I hope and believe that the Alexander Technique world is growing bigger every day, and as it does, I think it’s important that it becomes truly representative of the larger world we live in. There are over a billion people living in India and currently only one teacher – this seems like a pretty unfair ratio. Obviously, there is nothing but potential there, and I’m eager to be among the next few teachers in India, so that I can contribute to widening people’s access to this amazing work.