Seattle Dance Leader Quarterly Retreats

Most of the dance circles world-wide are led by one or two leaders; “group dynamics” and figuring out ways of leaders working together in that case are much simpler. But the Seattle Dance circle [since its inception, 25 or 30 years ago] has been a pioneer in the model of a Dance Leading Team—often including 10 or more leaders--which in its very human nature is more complex than working alone or in pairs.

For many years the Seattle Dance Team has been meeting for a day-long quarterly retreat to fashion agreements on how it will work together—how do we welcome and encourage new leaders? How do we determine when someone might join us as a SDT member? How do we fairly assign dance leading time? What are the obligations and expectations of SDT membership? During this meeting we also schedule for the coming quarter both dance leaders and musicians taking into account the various requests made by guest leaders, holiday celebrations, etc. that come to us.

We also receive and discuss input from the DUP Planning group.

Part of our retreat day has been devoted to deepening collaborative relationships among us through group spiritual practice, dance, and open-hearted discussion of issues that may have arisen either in the Seattle dance community at large or within the team itself. Our hope is to grow in cooperation, kindness, authenticity, truthfulness, love. When two or more are gathered, there is potential for conflict—the team meetings are also a place to bring and hopefully resolve interpersonal conflicts, differences of opinion.

One of the important aspects of the team meetings is confidentiality. Personal information shared during the meetings is not to be shared with those not present. This encourages a depth of sharing and honesty. Therefore, what will be reported out from our quarterly meetings to DUP Planning will be decisions that we perceive could effect the dance circle as a whole, questions or concerns we might wish the DUP Planning to address, and especially our responses to requests made by DUP Planning.