Dancing About Depression

Videos depicting the experience of depression/ mental "illness" through dance performance art

Here at Create Me Free, I am building an online library and connected community researching and writing about the complex relationship between art and mental health. While I celebrate art as therapy and the benefits of creativity, I really dig into the under-discussed shadow side of how our mental health symptoms can impact our creative process, content, productivity, medium choice, identity and business. 

(When I use the term “mental health” I sometimes mean things with a diagnosis and symptoms but more often I just mean something akin to “how the challenges of life are affecting our thoughts and experiences.” And that, in turn, affects our creativity.  And so, I believe that all of us are artists and all face mental health challenges to varying degrees.) 

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There’s a scene in the movie Playing By Heart in which Angelina Jolie quotes/ paraphrases the line:

“Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”

I love that because of what it so obviously means, and I also love it for what is more subtly true. Because it is really complicated to talk about love and it’s really hard to understand architecture through dance. And yet, sometimes one form of expression that you don’t at all think is suited to explaining something actually makes your heart feel exactly like you want it to. Sometimes you can talk about love. Sometimes you can dance about architecture.

I was thinking about this because the other day I shared a post with you that included a video that’s a dance performance and the subject of the dance is depression. And I think that’s a really powerful thing - a visual performance art medium that doesn’t elaborate a lot in other words about what it’s trying to express about the sometimes indescribable experience of living with depression.

So I went into the rabbit hole of exploring dance performance videos about depression/ mental “illness” and I wanted to share a few more with you today.