Life is Stepping into a Cypher Circle When You Can't Dance

I started dancing in college, “urban dance” as it’s now called. As a dancer that does urban dance, it is critical to learn foundational styles. You can’t begin to explore your body and develop a vocabulary of movement without building a foundation in those styles, such as popping, locking, housing, and wacking, to name a few.

A big part of the culture of foundational styles is what is called cyphering. You may have seen this before: a group of people stands around in a circle and take turns moving to the middle of the circle and dancing however they choose. If this sounds terrifying to you, it’s because it is.

Now imagine that setup; you’re an inexperienced dancer watching person after person tear it up in the middle of the circle. Eventually, numbers start dwindling down as more and more people enter the circle. Faced with the cold slap of inevitability you finally ask yourself, am I going to go in?

I don’t know about you but for me, 97.7% of the time that answer was a solid no. Why would I go into the middle of the circle? I am not doing handstands and certainly not popping it, locking it, nor dropping it. But that’s just it; who said that you needed to do any of those things? The cypher is for literally anyone; there are no rules, requirements, or prerequisites.

If you talk to anyone that’s danced for a long time, “old heads” as they’re known, they’ll probably all tell you the same thing: get into the cypher. I’m serious, they all do. And they will be incredibly adamant that you do. Even if you are a random person that stopped to look at the mass of people dancing in the middle of the park, they will encourage you to hop in and make your best Magikarp-Splash impression.

But why, though? What is the point of seeing me flail around in the middle of the circle? Do they secretly hate me and jump at the chance to see me embarrass myself? Do they like getting new people to go in so they can re-up on their own stores of confidence? So many thoughts swam around in my head until one day somebody broke it down for me:

“It’s because you’re taking and not giving. This is supposed to be an exchange, and you are not here to exchange, only to take.”

That stuck with me. It took me a while, but eventually, it all started to make sense. When someone goes into the middle of the circle, they are showing everyone else how they interpret the music. Everyone watching the person in the middle gets the opportunity to learn from them; learn new ways to move and new ways to listen to the music that they might not have otherwise thought to do. When you’re outside of the circle, you get to learn from all of those in the middle. But when you stay on the outside, you never give others the chance to learn from you.

No one else in the world sees things the way that you do.

You may not think that your experience is up to par with other dancers, or maybe you aren’t confident in your freestyling ability, but what you have to offer is incredibly valuable. The reason: No one else in the world sees things the way that you do. The way you hear the music, the way your body naturally wants to move, no one else can match it perfectly. But others can learn from it. They can be inspired by it. The way you move can spark curiosity, unlock new possibilities, and even resonate with some that want to build upon what you’ve taught them.

But as you get older, the cypher circle expands. The cypher is a team meeting where directors and senior members passionately give updates and debate ideas, while the newly onboarded members sit quietly. The cypher is your Instagram feed, where after the 30th selfie, your friend has found his perfect angle, golden hour lighting, and not a hair out of place. And with that selfie, he is giving you information to interpret. Until one day you decide that maybe you want to take a selfie too. And then a few days later you start to think that taking selfies isn’t so bad. So then you take another until finally, you’ve found some great angles for yourself. Then the inevitable; the ring light order on Amazon.

They cypher circle is a scary place, for some more than others. But somewhere, someone is waiting to see you vibe.

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