Social Dance as a Popular Technology of Regulation

Freedom, Leadership, and Belonging in Motion

The music begins.

One person offers a hand.

The other may accept, ask for more distance, or remain watching.

When the dance begins, no body enters the movement alone. Each step changes the space of the other. An approach invites a response. A pause changes expectation. A shift in direction reorganizes the couple and, often, the entire dance floor.

Perhaps the question is not only:

Which dance would you like to dance?

Perhaps it is:

What kind of relationship can your Body-Territory live right now: grounding, intensity, pause, embrace, distance, improvisation, or company?

From Self-Organizing Matter to the Dancing Body

In In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems, Giorgio Parisi shows that relatively simple components may produce much more complex collective forms through interaction.

Atoms, molecules, and other elements without DNA can form patterns, structures, and transitions that were not designed by a central unit. The flight of starlings is one of his best-known examples: each bird responds mainly to nearby birds, yet the result appears as a large body moving together.

We may understand this passage through a simple idea:

Organization can emerge through relationship without requiring a central commander.

When life enters this history, DNA makes continuity and inheritance possible, but it does not prescribe a single way of living in groups.

Schools of fish, flocks, families, and communities develop different forms of coordinating movement. In some groups, certain leaders remain influential for longer periods. In others, leadership changes according to context, direction, or necessity.

Research on fish has identified both the emergence of leadership roles and the ability of effective leaders to trigger collective changes in movement.

Social dance belongs to this same question about organization:

How can many bodies form a common movement without losing their individuality?

The Problem Begins When Leadership Becomes Domination

For a long time, the expression “alpha male” was used as though it described a natural law: a strong individual would dominate the others and permanently earn the right to command.

Biologist L. David Mech, whose earlier work helped popularize part of this interpretation of wolves, later explained that the model was based primarily on artificial groups living in captivity.

In wild populations, a wolf pack generally functions as a family. The animals described as “alphas” are usually the parents of the other members, not permanent winners of a struggle for power.

This does not mean that no species has hierarchies or conflicts.

It means that reducing all collective life to a pyramid controlled by a dominant male is a poor simplification.

Even so, the myth continues to circulate because it is useful to those who sell strength, superiority, and obedience as forms of identity.

In the digital manosphere, the image of the “alpha” is often associated with rigid norms of masculinity, hostility toward women, and reactionary political narratives.

A study reported by Brazil’s Ministry of Women analyzed thousands of Brazilian channels and found that 80 percent of those classified as misogynistic used monetization strategies such as advertising, donations, or product sales.

Academic studies also identify connections among the manosphere, misogyny, the pursuit of control, and sectors of the authoritarian right.

The alpha myth transforms the collective into the audience of a single body.

Dance may teach us something else.

Dance as an Original Democracy

In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow challenge the idea that humanity inevitably progressed from small and simple groups toward increasingly hierarchical societies.

Archaeology and anthropology show that human beings experimented with many forms of organization, alternated political structures, created cities without kings, and developed practices of freedom long before modern democracies.

Social dance does not prove a political theory, but it may function as a small experience of original democracy in motion.

There is a shared task: to continue dancing.

For that to happen, one person may initiate a direction. But the other body must receive it, understand it, and respond.

Leading should not mean commanding.

Following should not mean obeying.

A step fully exists only when it encounters a response.

In tango, a shift in weight may become an invitation.

In forró, the couple negotiates proximity, grounding, and direction.

In salsa, speed and alternation require continuous attention.

In cumbia, repetition sustains a shared territory in which different bodies may create variations.

In bolero, the interval becomes important.

In bachata, distance, contact, and mobility must be continually adjusted.

These dances are not naturally free or democratic. They may also reproduce sexism, coercion, rigid roles, and unwanted contact.

They become popular technologies of freedom when leadership can circulate, contact can be adjusted, and each person maintains the right to stop.

Research on consent in social dance communities argues that consent must be affirmative and continuous, involving teachers, organizers, and participants in the creation of environments where invitations can be refused without punishment.

Democracy in dance does not mean that everyone performs the same step.
It means that everyone can participate in creating the next step.

BioDance: Perceiving Oneself While Moving

In BrainLatam’s interpretation, BioDance may be understood as life perceiving itself through movement.

A person does not need to wait until the dance ends to know what happened.

They feel while moving.

They notice weight.

They find or lose balance.

They approach.

They step back.

They accept a proposal.

They transform another.

BrainLatam’s formulation that “consciousness is a movement that perceives itself” helps us think of dance not as the simple execution of commands, but as the continuous production of perception and choice.

This is a conceptual and investigative hypothesis, not the validation of a universal therapeutic protocol.

It also changes the meaning of regulation.

To regulate oneself does not necessarily mean becoming calm.

One Body-Territory may need grounding and repetition.

Another may need speed.

Another may need distance.

Another finds safety in an embrace.

Another can remain present only when contact is optional.

A regulating dance is not one that imposes harmony.

It is one that restores possibilities.

Jiwasa and Human Quorum Sensing

Within the BrainLatam hypothesis, Jiwasa is the relational state in which the “I” participates in a “we” without disappearing within it.

A couple may become Jiwasa when they find a shared rhythm while preserving the right to vary.

A circle may become Jiwasa when it welcomes different levels and intensities of participation.

A dance floor ceases to be Jiwasa when synchronization begins to demand obedience.

Human Quorum Sensing is used by BrainLatam as a metaphor for investigating how people perceive changes in the state of a group and adjust their participation.

It does not mean that human beings literally function like bacterial colonies.

It means observing how rhythm, breathing, distance, gaze, and movement may signal that the collective is changing.

On the dance floor, you notice when people are becoming more confident.

You notice when the space is tense.

You notice when someone needs to stop.

You notice when the group has found a shared pulse.

This belonging may regulate.

But it may also capture.

For this reason, a true Jiwasa does not emerge from synchrony alone. It requires consent, freedom, and the possibility of disagreement.

The Festival as a Research Territory

The Joinville Dance Festival may investigate these relationships without removing dance from its territory.

With a system such as the Brite Ultra, it would be technically possible to synchronize fNIRS recordings from up to 30 participants in more naturalistic situations.

Researchers could observe couples or groups during changes in rhythm, leadership, distance, and contact.

But no brain measurement could prove democracy, belonging, or consent on its own.

Responsible research would need to bring together movement, bodily signals, cultural context, choices of approach or refusal, and first-person accounts.

Neuroscience could ask when a group coordinates.

Participants would need to say whether that coordination was experienced as freedom, pleasure, effort, discomfort, or obligation.

The Next Step Belongs to the Relationship

The music continues.

Someone begins a movement.

Another body receives, changes, or refuses it.

Perhaps leadership exists for a few seconds.

Then it changes.

Perhaps the couple moves closer.

Then finds distance.

Collective movement does not need an alpha male.

It needs attention, listening, trust, and freedom, so that the next step is not decided before the encounter.

Which dance does your Body-Territory need right now?

Perhaps forró.

Perhaps tango.

Perhaps salsa, cumbia, bolero, or bachata.

Perhaps simply watching.

The answer is not found in the superiority of one dance form.

It is found in the possibility of choosing a relationship in which the body may participate without disappearing.

In the previous text, touch restored space for one region of the body to signal and explore new paths.

From here, the investigation will move toward another dispute over collective movement:

Can live dance restore presence to bodies accustomed to being guided by the fragmentation and polarization of social networks?

References and Their Contributions

PARISI, Giorgio. In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems.
Contribution: Provides a basis for understanding how local interactions may generate complex collective forms without central command.

GRAEBER, David; WENGROW, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
Contribution: Demonstrates that human societies have always experimented with diverse forms of freedom, leadership, and political organization, challenging the idea that hierarchy is inevitable.

MECH, L. David. “Alpha Status, Dominance, Leadership, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs.”
Contribution: Corrects the popular interpretation of the “alpha male” by showing that wild wolf packs generally function as families rather than permanent arenas of struggle for command.

MCMAINS, Juliet. “Fostering a Culture of Consent in Social Dance Communities.” Journal of Dance Education, 2022.
Contribution: Supports the need for affirmative and continuous consent in social dance.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. BioDance, NeuroDance, and Consciousness in Motion.
Contribution: Presents BioDance as an exploratory field in which the body perceives and reorganizes its own experience while moving.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Human Quorum Sensing and Jiwasa.
Contribution: Offers metaphors for investigating coordination, belonging, and collective change without reducing the group to a single mind.

ARTINIS MEDICAL SYSTEMS. Brite Ultra: fNIRS Hyperscanning System.
Contribution: Presents a technical possibility for simultaneously recording cortical hemodynamic changes in groups without confusing these measurements with direct measures of freedom, democracy, or belonging.

BRAZILIAN MINISTRY OF WOMEN. Study on the Monetization of Misogynistic Content on YouTube, 2024.
Contribution: Shows how discourses of rigid masculinity and hostility toward women may be transformed into profitable digital ecosystems.