How Movelab in Dubai uses dance to boost creativity

We try the Movelab Creative Movement class, where anxiety over free-form dance gives way to a renewed sense of ingenuity.

Contemporary dancer Monica Antezana (in green) is the founder of Movelab Dance Centre. Antonie Robertson / The National

Dance, to me, has always been about uncompromising technique.

Over the years, while watching numerous stage productions, I’ve found myself gaping in astonishment at the finesse of the dancers. It never fails to drive home the importance of a strong foundation – whether it’s adopting the isolation approach in jazz, practising clean lines for a classic pirouette or the number-based movement in contemporary dance. And that in turn has reinforced and, perhaps, cemented a fear of taking up dance for recreation.

But sell it to me as a process of turning my awkward body language into a well-thought-out art form and dance suddenly begins to look like an exciting activity.

I recently attended a dance class with the Dubai-based contemporary dance choreographer Monica Antezana, who runs Movelab Dance Centre.

Antezana opened the centre in 2013 after studying, teaching and choreographing for 20 years in Germany and Holland.

“My class is not about teaching steps,” says Antezana. “It’s not about salsa or ballet. It’s certainly not about copying moves, but about inventing your own movement and creating your own dance.”

The Bolivian dancer says the idea of a no-holds-barred dance laboratory came from an obsession with the relationship between dance and intelligence.

“If you draw parallels between creativity and intelligence, you’ll find they are similar,” she says. “They are both about solving problems and the ability to adjust to the changing world. To me, that is dance.”

The pep talk in that spacious, fully mirrored dance hall at the Fondue Art Centre at Al Ghazal Mall, where the classes are held, got me to stay. But that thought was quickly replaced by a more terrifying one: how does a newcomer create moves without channelling the Macarena or Gangnam Style? (I've just revealed my dance-floor secrets).

Antezana says there are specific tasks to build up that momentum and explore our bodies, the space around us and timing to create the end result. On that day, the theme for our class of eight adults was shapes.

“In one class we are going to do two things: we are going to think and we are going to move,” says Antezana.

We begin by sitting cross-­legged on the floor for a rather unusual warm-up session. The instructor asks us to interpret our names as the first movement that pops into our head. We repeat that exercise several times, then move on to isolated body-part movements. Antezana makes us wiggle our toes and swing our arms, loosening us up for the specific musical tasks to follow.

The next 20 minutes of the 90-minute session, when Antezana turns up the volume on a pop-jazz melody, is when I break into a sweat.

The instructor, who joins us on the floor, asks us to throw our bodies around the room and use all our limbs to improvise and create various forms. We’re supposed to test our balance, posture, coordination and alignment by working together, interlocking ourselves into dynamic moving shapes, without restrictions or musical limitations.

In the final 10 minutes we had to memorise three moves guided by mathematical shapes and these would form the basis of a human structure – it turned out to be similar to one of the obscurely structured high-rises on Sheikh Zayed Road.

“I want to give dance this freedom,” says Antezana, before our session begins. “Your movement shouldn’t be bound by the music. It does not need to be a perfect result, just like creating something with Lego.”

She says the classes, which are tailored for adults and children, provide a low-impact workout, while helping raise self-confidence and aid mental training.

“You are working your brain cells and muscle cells at the same time,” she says.

“You also gain confidence as you collaborate and discipline yourself to fulfil tasks.”

The Movelab sessions feel a lot like contemporary dance without the burden of rules. This isn’t a dance form in itself, but more of an assistive technique for established dancers in traditional genres to break a plateau and dare to bend the rules. For the rest of us, it’s a good way to escape the monotony of a gym session and perhaps carry forward a new, uninhibited approach to creativity.

• Movelab Creative Movement sessions for children above 3 and adults are held at Dubai Community Theatre & Arts Centre and Fondue Art Centre. For more information, email [e-mail] or visit www.movelabdance.com