WHY ARE WE SO DEDICATED TO HOBBIES, AND WHEN DOES INTEREST TURN INTO OBSESSION? AN AMATEUR DANCER INVESTIGATES.
By Ginny Bixby
I was accustomed to auditions and dance competitions being high-pressured and awkward. I would practice for hours the night before, going over the routine so many times until I did it as perfectly as I could. There would always be that one girl in my category who did her overstretched splits in front of everyone before the audition even started just to intimidate the competition. You could always cut the tension in the room with a knife.
But there I was, in the middle of a dance studio, like I had been countless times before. Somehow, this time felt different. I was trying out for the University of Mary Washington dance group, the Performing Arts Company, and I was no stranger to auditions. While I was incredibly nervous, this room didn't feel like a giant pressure cooker.
First of all, I was one of the few dancers dressed in full dancewear. While I wore tights and a leotard like I would for ballet class, all the veterans who had been in the company before were in t-shirts and leggings and were giggling and chatting.
Still, when the audition started, the anxiety of worrying I wasn’t good enough hit me like always. I hadn’t danced that intensely for a few months. A plié, a relatively simple bend at the knees, felt a little more stiff than usual- I used to do hundreds of those at the barre in dance class. I soon realized that everyone was rusty, and everyone was laughing at themselves as they made mistakes. Sure, everyone was a little jittery and nervous, but there was an overwhelming feeling of fun. I wasn’t used to this. When I would mess up in a class or at competition, I would turn beet red and pray my dance teacher or the adjudicator. But when I fell out of a fouetté turn at this audition, I just sort of laughed. While I loved dance, I always took it incredibly seriously. This room I was in held such a different feeling than I was used to.
Me dancing a week before I graduated from high school. I thought this was likely the end of my time as a dancer. Photo by Katie Rose Photography.
Dance has always been my thing. Growing up in school, everyone knew me as the dancer. I missed countless homecoming dances, football games, and birthday parties for dance classes and competitions, and I don’t regret that one bit. Even though dance was my entire life, by the time I was in high school, I had decided not to pursue a career in dance- it’s a tough business, I didn’t have the right body type, and ultimately I did want a normal college experience. I thought my high school graduation would mark the end of an era for my dancing. So I was a bit surprised when after my first week of college classes I ended up auditioning for the Performing Arts Company, lovingly referred to as “PAC” by its members.
I was cast in a dance in the company, and the more time I spent there, I discovered something fascinating. I wasn’t dancing anymore because I was trying to win a competition or become professional. It was purely a hobby. It got me to thinking more about the purpose of hobbies and why people are so dedicated to them, in a broader sense. Are they good for us? And if so, why?
Dr. Kelly Lambert, professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon University, published a book in 2008 entitled “Lifting Depression.” In the book, Lambert argues that working on projects with your hands could assist in alleviating symptoms of depression. She performed a study on the effect of activity on resilience using two groups of rats. One group of rats was presented with a mound of cage bedding, under which the researchers had hidden a Froot Loop. They had to dig through the mound to obtain the Froot Loop. The other group of rats were given Froot Loops freely lying around the cage. They did not have to do any work to get them. When the researchers gave both groups of rats an unsolvable digging challenge, the group of rats that had previously had to work for Froot Loops worked twice as long and hard in the challenge than the rats who had the Froot Loops freely given to them did. The hardworking rats also had more Neuropeptide Y, a brain neuropeptide associated with resilience, in their systems than the rats that did not have to work did.
Because of the results of her research, Lambert argues that activity builds up resilience and positive mental health. She believes that using the effort driven rewards circuit in the brain is crucial in decreasing susceptibility to depression. In her map of the brain, Lambert analyzed the connection between the adjacently located nucleus accumbens, which controls pleasure, and the primary motor cortex, which controls motor activity in the body. Lambert believes it is not a mistake that these two parts of the brain are so close to each other, and that they work in tandem. Therefore, motor activity may result in pleasure.
Lambert notes that our brains have not evolved much since their prehistoric origins, and we are still inclined to appreciate working with our bodies as the cavemen did and that it is rewarding to our brains to engage in physical and motor activity. Even in the early 1900s, physicians would prescribe knitting to female patients who were suffering from anxiety because they noticed that symptoms decreased in patients who had a hobby to concentrate on, and that patients became more calm after engaging in this repetitive movement. We now know that this is because movements like that release serotonin in the brain. When we engage in passive activities like watching TV, our brains are literally numbed, whereas when we engage in motor activity, our brain’s reward circuit is engaged and we feel pleasure. Lambert also believes that when activities are too easy, it’s not good for our brains, so participating in challenging motor activity is vital.
Lambert’s ideas explain why it’s a good idea to step away from intellectual pursuits, which dominate so much of school and working life, and to do something with our bodies. But they don’t quite get at what had changed when I suddenly started becoming less competitive about dancing. So that’s what I decided to pursue next. I read that author and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihaly proposed that when we do an activity for long enough, we create a state of consciousness called “flow,” and this is what makes us happy. When we are deeply involved with something in the moment, this creates “flow.” Csikszentmihaly developed this theory after observing artists who spent a large amount of time working on their craft. Among other principles, he believes that in order to achieve “flow”, the situation must be challenging, but not too stressful or difficult. That made sense to me. I did feel that I achieved a certain level of flow during PAC that I wasn’t able to before because an aspect that made it stressful, namely competition, was removed.
Me and the rest of PAC's sophomore class goofing around at our biannual picnic. Photo by Kacie Waters-Heflin.
So maybe it turns out that for me and so many others, PAC is our flow, a kind of positive addiction. The dances we perform are challenging, but not too difficult and stressful. There’s not a great deal of judgment towards our dance ability, and the whole goal is to have fun. We experience pleasure when we engage in dancing, and we reap the rewards when we have an amazing performance.
I talked to one of my close friends, Erynn Sendrick, who is the president of PAC, about why she feels that we love PAC so much. She put it in a way that makes a great deal of sense for a college student.
“I value the lack of seriousness in PAC because it allows to enjoy dance as an outlet instead of another aspect of evaluation,” she said. “We're already being graded on so many things in college, but in PAC I can go and just be myself. Honestly, what makes it so great is the environment. We’re all just here for a good time, and we like being silly, and at the end of the day we all love and support one another.” What she means is that, most simply and honestly put, it's fun. It's stress-free. It's not about trying to be the best, it's about trying to better ourselves.
College is a lot for me. As much as I love it, it's a lot of work for me. I'm an English major and I'm considering a second major in American Studies. I'm pursuing a career in journalism, so I am an editor and writer for the school newspaper, which takes up a great deal of my time and energy. And while I have handled all of this pretty well so far, I'm not sure if I would be able to without dance. Dance is good for me, and getting into that psychological flow helps me stay mentally and physically healthy.
And above all, dance is my outlet. There are rough times in life, but dance is what is always there for me to turn to. This semester, I choreographed a contemporary piece for one of PAC's shows, and it was one of the best creative experiences I've ever had. I was able to let loose and create something that was entirely my own. In PAC, I’ve had to retrain my brain to not be so tough on myself. When I dance now, if I release all the worry and tension, I can find myself in a place of freedom, and it makes me never want to stop dancing.