What’s so special about women’s only dances?
This is an interview between Kata Armitage and myself. Kata is the co-founder of Ecstatic Dance Culture - a regular full moon women’s dance in London. In this interview we explore the healing magic of women’s only dance spaces, syncing with lunar cycles, and how this work can support women to break out of gender conditioning, experience more body confidence, and feel supported by fellow women.
Taken at the Women’s Ecstatic Dance Retreat in Portugal 2024 with Ecstatic Experiences.
Kata: What is it about ecstatic Dance that you’re drawn to?
Gaia: I grew up in Cornwall as a child of the noughties, dancing my ass off to drum and bass in muddy fields, and that sense of abandon and expression through movement has always felt really central to me. I love festival culture, but what I’m most drawn to about ecstatic dance is the combination of complete wild abandon and expression in a sober environment, and the recognition that we can access incredible altered states of consciousness simply by being present with the music and what’s moving in our bodies.
To me, ecstatic dance is a form of movement meditation and emotional processing — a place to gain insights and clarity around the big questions we’re carrying in our lives. It’s a space to come together, to meet new people, and to celebrate the joy of being in a human body. It feels like one of the most ancient practices we have as a human species: a form of catharsis and communion with the divine.
Kata: In your experience facilitating women’s only spaces, what shifts do you notice when women move together?
Gaia: I’ve been facilitating women’s work for the past ten years, and my work brings together embodiment, relational skills, nature connection, dance, and ritual. The spaces I create invite us to interrogate social scripts and gender conditioning, and to consciously rewrite those stories in ways that help us find a deeper sense of empowerment.
What I notice again and again in women-only spaces is how quickly a sense of safety and intimacy emerges, allowing us to go much deeper together. In women’s dance spaces in particular, women often feel more comfortable expressing parts of themselves that may feel less safe in mixed containers — such as the sensual and sexual aspects of themselves, or the more wild and rageful energies. Given that one of the core feminine wounds can be around competition and jealousy, women-only dance spaces become a beautiful way to come together, celebrate one another in all our different shapes and guises, and simply move and be together.
Kata: What is particularly special about a women’s full moon dance?
Gaia: What’s special about a women’s full moon dance is that it follows an ancient practice women have been gathering in for millennia. For those of us who menstruate, it offers a deeply embodied way to feel our connection to nature and cyclical rhythms. For those who don’t, it provides a way to connect with the natural rhythms inherent to the feminine — the ongoing process of death and rebirth. For me, the full moon is about celebration, release, and being seen — about allowing ourselves to be visible, and take up space which are often things women struggle to do.
Kata: What do you hope the women who attend walk away with after one of your dance experiences?
Gaia: I hope that women who attend one of my dance experiences walk away with a sense of lightness — having tapped into playfulness, feeling more in touch with their bodies, and perhaps even more in love with them. I want women to feel that everything they are is welcome: their rage, their tears, their sensuality, their shyness, their weirdness.
As women, we so often walk a narrow line between being “too much” and “not enough.” My hope is that these spaces expand our capacity for what we believe we’re allowed to be, supporting women to learn to love themselves as they are, and to leave feeling a sense of sisterhood, connection, and support from one another.
