The Human Signal #43 - What a Baroque Pole Dance Improv Taught Me About Control, Flow, and Surrendering to Slowness

Hello and welcome to The Human Signal with me, Laura Sheeran. This episode is fundamentally about returning to the body—through dance, flow, and improvisation—as a counterpoint to control, anxiety, and perfectionism. I’m reflecting on a performance I did last week where I decided to experiment with improvisation in my pole dance practice. Alongside that, there is also a clear tension around time, urgency, and learning to slow down, particularly in the studio mixing process which is currently underway with Brian for my first Persona Project record.I talk about the shift from following strict choreography in dance performances, with it’s promise of performance security and perfection potential (despite the stress and anxiety it can also generate), to following musical instinct and freeform improvisation above all, in pursuit of true embodiment. I reflect on the pressure I put on myself to perform perfectly, and what happened when I felt brave enough let that go.I also share how that experience is shaping my thinking around the Dancer persona in The Persona Project, and how I might present that work live. Next I reflect on the studio process, the tension between urgency and patience, and what it means to allow time for quality to emerge in the music while time is passing and the toxic, unavoidable, cultural narratives around women and aging, start affect your ability to truly enjoy what is a beautiful and precious gift given by the universe. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend or consider leaving a comment or review, it really helps me out. You can also support me and my work by becoming a paid member, it’s €5 per month on Substack and Patreon. And lastly, you can still find me on YouTube / Instagram as @the_persona_project__ & @laurasheeran_ieThat's all for now. Thanks for being here, and remember: Put humans first. Don't feed the machines.Below are the relevant links and videos mentioned in this episode, along with a condensed transcript of this episode which has been AI generated from the raw transcript, for those who want to scan the gist of this episode without having to listen to the full audio. 👇🏻It’s been a while, guys. I have been very busy in the studio for the past week. I posted about this yesterday in the Persona Lab post on my Substack. I have been mixing, and mixing and mixing with Brian at his studio, third Ear. I took a break on Friday to do a pole dance performance in Navan for a fundraiser. It was a beautiful thing to be part of. Here is a link to the GoFundMe relating to the fundraiser, it’s for my friend’s brother who suffered a very severe stroke at just 33.It was really a brilliant thing to get to dance and perform, primarily for the cause but also because I had been spending so much time in the studio, which demands a lot of sitting down, and I find that I get so stiff so quickly. The older I get, the more intense that is. We have been spending long hours in the studio, so I was very grateful to have the chance to dance and perform.For this gig, I decided to experiment with improvisation. Every time I perform with pole, which isn’t that often, I use it as an opportunity to try something new. I dance a lot in the studio, but it’s not the same as performing in front of an audience. The more I perform, the more I’m finding confidence in my own style, which is very slow and flow-based.At the beginning, I felt pressure to fill every beat of the music and include as many tricks as possible. Part of that was nervous energy, but part of it was the psychological pressure to entertain the audience. Recently, I’ve been finding more value in slowing down. The more confident I become in that, the more I feel I can turn something slow into something magical.The pressure to fill a routine with tricks also means having choreography prepared, which makes me anxious. I have a perfectionistic mind, so if I get something wrong, I can leave a performance feeling like I failed instead of enjoying it. That tendency to criticise afterwards takes away from the experience.For this performance, I chose a song I often use in training, “Problems” by 6lack. I decided to prepare by freestyling rather than setting choreography, getting familiar with the song and letting the movement come from that. On the morning of the show, I found out there were cancellations, so I offered to do a second performance.I chose a Baroque piece by Marin Marais, something I’ve danced to privately before. It’s not typical pole music, but it allows for a deep, slow, emotional flow. I looped a short section to create a longer piece. I often dance to baroque music when I’m pole training, there’s something about the raw emotion contained in the music which really lets me feel the movement more deeply somehow. I especially like dancing to the slower music of Henry PurcellI was nervous right before I performed on Friday, because both performances would be improvised, and one of them was very unconventional. I opened with the Baroque piece and kept the movement simple, focusing on what I knew well and could do gracefully. The second piece was more intense, because I felt more confident after the first performance and allowed myself to fully let go. I extended the movement onto the floor, used the space, and followed instinct all the way through.I loved these performances so much and definitely came away wanting to lean more into improvisation when it comes to pole dance performance. This connects directly to The Persona Project then too. The album I’ve written and recorded as Dancer Persona is music which encapsulates this exact energy, this vibe. It is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few months in terms of how I might approach the live performance of that record. The songs for that persona don’t sit easily alongside the other songs in a traditional style set, but they do make way more sense in a dance context.I’m starting to think about creating a dance-based show for that album, possibly in smaller, more intimate venues. Performing the music through movement rather than singing might be a more accurate expression of where the work comes from.At the same time, I’m still working in the studio with Brian on the mixes. He’s doing incredible work. I keep trying to rush the process, saying it’s good enough, but every time he takes more time, it comes back significantly better. The improvement is undeniable.I’m recognising this tendency in myself to rush things, to want everything done immediately. I’m trying to let go of that and trust the process. I’m also challenging the narratives around time and aging that create pressure to produce quickly.I’m choosing to be defiant against that and to allow the work to reach the level of quality it deserves. I’m proud of what we’re making.I’ll leave it there for today, but just to say that I have a few things I want to follow up on in upcoming episodes, including a final reflection on the Delta situation and revisiting articles about leaving social media. I’ve noticed how easy it is to slip back into old habits, like defaulting to WhatsApp instead of Signal, even when I’ve made a conscious effort to change. So I’ll be revisiting those topics this week.Until then! xx This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurasheeran.substack.com/subscribe