Terra Crowl believes her years of structured dance and choreography training gave her the tools to fully emote and play with others in ecstatic dance.
Terra dances to communicate. From color guard competitions in high school and belly dance training in Spain to ecstatic communities and big performances, Terra inspires others to embrace their fullest, most authentic selves.
I met Terra a few months ago at a post-ecstatic dance picnic. With her calming presence, care in relationships, and dedication to social work, she clearly cares deeply about humans. In ecstatic, I’ve witnessed her beautifully enjoying her body and gracefully moving with others.
“Finding ecstatic dance changed my life completely. What I experienced was like really, utterly getting my need to be seen met. Truly, in all aspects – my silly, playful side, my more crazy side, and my sensual side. It was normalized to have this full range of physical expression. It was protected and safe since we were all experiencing this together,” Terra explained.
Last Wednesday afternoon, over a picnic at Dolores Park, I interviewed Terra about her creative dance practices. We illuminated things like early creative mediums, her profound belly dance flowering, creative obstacles and triumphs, ecstatic challenges, and advice for newcomers.
“Dance is where I feel like I can truly be who I am. I feel some self-consciousness or limited beliefs around expressing myself verbally or other things I’m not good at. Dancing, making a presence, and communicating with people via my body feels so natural. It’s like tapping into this primordial essence like, before words, we communicated through our bodies,” Terra expressed.
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AC: Tell me about your journey with creative mediums over the years.
TC: My family has a bunch of artists in it. My sister does sculptures, paintings, and drawings. My brother does drawings. My mom paints. My dad does construction and carpentry and comes up with furniture.
I really found my niche with dance in high school. That’s really where I found myself. Prior to that, I wrote poetry. It was angsty teenage poetry about death, boys, and stuff like that.
I was in color guard, and we went in front of marching bands. We’d spin rifles, flags, sabers, etc. That was my first introduction to dance.
I was the team captain for two years. We made really cool shows and competed. We choreographed these intricate pieces, with sabers and flags. It was super fun. It was my life. I thought I’d be a color guard instructor coming out of school.
AC: What are some of the touchpoints up until now?
TC: I finished color guard in high school and went to college. At first, I minored in theater. Then I realized, they had just gotten a dance minor the year I came in. So I changed my minor to dance. I studied psychology as my major.
That really expanded everything for me. It was the different types of dance, like African dance, modern, contemporary, ballet, all these different styles.
The first belly dance class I took was for a project I was doing. I went downtown to take this class. At the time, it seemed fine, whatever.
When I moved to Spain, I really started studying belly dance intentionally and professionally. I moved to Madrid and fell in love with belly dance. That’s more Egyptian-style belly dance with Northern African and Moroccan influence. I lived in Spain for three years and danced off and on throughout that time.
AC: What motivated you to study dance?
TC: I had such a craving to perform. That’s why I studied theater in college and then dance, and I loved color guard. We got to perform and compete.
There’s something about working really hard on something and then showcasing that to the world. I get so much joy and feel so fulfilled doing that. To this day, it’s really what charged me forward in performative dance. It’s about really knowing something well and being able to share that, see how it impacts people, and see how people react. It’s a really precious experience.
AC: What happened after you studied dance in Spain?
TC: For a long time, my dance practice, mostly belly dance, was more of a secondary thing. Like it’s a fun thing to do. I think because of certain relationships I was in, it wasn’t really supported very much for a certain period of my life.
After Spain, I moved in with a partner in Santa Cruz, where I was originally. I started doing my work as a social worker, working for a non-profit that serves families with children who have cancer.
I felt I wasn’t able to incorporate dance very well for whatever reason. It was a two-year period that felt like a dark time. I felt kind of cut off in a lot of ways. I was still doing some classes, I just felt like my creative, performative self wasn’t really being able to be expressed.
I think it was because I was sacrificing my spontaneity from living in Spain to be more secure and stable, which is what I really craved after having lived abroad for three years. So I kind of let go of my more creative parts to be stable and work and develop my relationship.
That ended, and then I had a new era in my life where I rediscovered dancing. That was really great and profound.
AC: How did you rediscover dancing?
TC: I broke up with that partner I was with. I moved in with my dad and went into my second master’s program for social work.
The pandemic was also happening at that time, and I think that sparked the opportunity for me to dive into dance in such a profound way – such a real, intimate, profound way.
I had a lot of space to explore and be creative with my dance. I did a belly dance and teacher training program through Body Temple Dance, which is with a tribal fusion belly dancer. I did her online courses, and I studied a lot of her movement vocabulary.
That’s when I started really growing as a dancer and becoming more knowledgeable about the different moves. I started creating choreographies, making videos of my choreographies, doing different dance challenges, and becoming more a part of the belly dance scene.
AC: When did ecstatic dance come into the picture?
TC: I’d been studying belly dance for five years or so. Then in May 2021, I found out about “Ecstaturday,” an ecstatic dance in Golden Gate Park. I went religiously every single Saturday.
It was the first time I was able to connect with others in dance, in a non-choreographed way.
AC: What motivated you to keep going back?
TC: I’ll go to the Church of 8 Wheels or something ecstatic, and I have so much I can do because I’ve learned so much. I’m studying partner dance, contact, zouk, belly dance, and I can just bring that out. It’s like my playground. It’s where I’m the happiest honestly.
In ecstatic dance, that was really where I could communicate with people for the first time without feeling like, “Oh, I won’t say the right thing or do it the right way.” But no, everything is right. You’re accepted, and it’s playful. You’re growing in connections with others by playing with them, and it’s truly magical. I keep coming back because it’s a place unlike anywhere else in the world.
AC: What do you feel like you’re communicating?
TC: I like to pull people out of their comfort zones. A lot of the time, I’ll come up to people, and this is actually how me and my partner met. He’s doing his own thing, whatever. I’m just coming up to people and shaking them up a little bit. Not like in a violating way, but you know, I like kind of testing people.
What I’ve found with ecstatic dance is there’s somebody that’s dancing, and they’re doing some repetitive thing, maybe shaking or whatever. I come up to people and give them a suggestion, like just say, *shimmy*. I do something that is suggestive, and see, what are you going to do? Are you going to do this other thing? Are you going to mirror me? Are you going to run away?
I want to play with that energy, shake it up, and get people to feel inspired to be weird.
I love going up to the person who looks like they’re super in their world. Maybe they feel sad, angry, or confused. Who knows how they’re feeling. I like shaking them up a little bit, letting them know, “Hey, it’s okay. This too shall pass. Let’s just like frolic over here for a minute.” That’s kind of the message.
It’s not always like that. Sometimes, if I’m feeling really frisky and feeling my curves, that will attract different kinds of energy towards me. My favorite thing is to break up energy.
If I’m attracting a certain kind of energy, I’ll leave and then go somewhere else that doesn’t have that. Then I try something else on and be really silly or maybe I’ll be really primal and jumping and rolling on the ground or whatever.
AC: What does creativity mean to you?
TC: I think it’s the authentic expression, and where that comes out on the dance floor is a conversation with another person. The creative nature is what comes out of that conversation.
AC: Where does it come from?
TC: I think it starts with curiosity and openness. Like, okay, I’m going to be a little vulnerable right now and do something a little strange. I’m just going to see how this person responds.
Then, in their response, that’s the conversation. That’s really a beautiful, unique, creative bubble that you’ve created. That’s really powerful. That can expand out. Other people will see that you’re doing that thing, and they’ll want to join in.
It evolves, and you move around in different places and stir things up.
AC: How do creative projects fit in with the rest of your life?
TC: I feel that doing ecstatic dance kind of washes away whatever stories I had in my head. It’s a very cleansing experience for me.
Like I come in, and I had to remove this kid from their house because of where I work. And I’m really disgruntled and feeling kind of closed off. I’m telling whatever story in my head about that.
Then I come into ecstatic dance, and I’m literally shaking my body and doing weird things and emoting. I come away without that story. The story is gone. I feel like a clean slate.
I feel like I’m able to continue doing the work that I do, to be emotionally available for people in my professional capacity as a social worker and therapist. In order to be present for people, I have to let the things wash over me and release.
That’s what ecstatic does for me.
AC: Have you had any challenges in your ecstatic journey?
TC: A recent one that’s come up, I’ve been getting feedback from guys lately, like more than one, that they’ve felt kind of led on or something by me on the dance floor.
Like they’ve been hurt or confused. They’ve interpreted my sensuality and openness on the dance floor, as being an invitation to date them or something. I don’t really know. I’ve gotten this feedback a few times from people.
One person told me, “That’s why I avoid you on the dance floor, because you give me an energy, and I’m confused by it.” I’m like, this is fucking dance. I’m not going to sleep with you. That’s kind of challenging, because I feel really free in general when I’m dancing, but it’s kind of made me take a step back, and be like, I don’t want to harm people.
I’m Buddhist, so I believe in non-harming or minimal impact. I really try not to make people feel uncomfortable. But I also want to be able to feel free, emote, and express.
That’s a challenge because I’m a very sensual being. I am. I’m a belly dancer. I’m in my sensual body, and I enjoy that. I feel most at home dancing in a sensual way. So, it’s tricky not wanting to hurt other people in that way.
Ecstatic dance is such a container, and that’s why I love it. It’s a two-hour space of complete and total freedom. I think that that can impact, particularly in my experience, men in a way that is confusing. Or in a way that could be threatening to them.
As a woman, it’s a weird thing to navigate, and I’m kind of dealing with it by doing more partner dancing. Because it’s more of a structure where we know who’s doing what. Rather than ecstatic where anything goes.
So that’s something that I’m grappling with, trying to understand, and trying to be responsible about. But also not overthink it either.
AC: Do you have advice for people new to ecstatic dance?
TC: Come early. Do the classes beforehand, like contact or yoga, to get you more comfortable being in your body.
I would seek out classes in whatever authentic relating modality you’re interested in. For ecstatic dance, I mostly recommend contact. Maybe some partner dancing could be helpful too, maybe fusion or whatever you’re drawn to, just to get you ready to start mingling with people on the dance floor.
That’s if you’re looking for connections on the dance floor. If you’re not, that’s totally fine too. If you don’t want to do that, there are really no other requirements. You just show up.
Maybe learn how to compassionately convey to people that you’re unavailable. Sometimes you just keep your eyes closed or gently turn your back away from the person or use prayer hands.
AC: What are you most excited about and looking forward to?
TC: I’m doing a performance on Saturday at Ashkenaz with Jill Parker and our belly dance troupe in Berkeley. I’m really looking forward to that. I’m also doing a partner dance festival this weekend.
Every time I can dance, that’s what I’m looking forward to, the next time that I can dance. The next time I will dance will be tomorrow. I’m doing zouk, which is a partner dance. Just learning and connecting with my community.
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Terra’s journey inspires me. I appreciate how she processes challenges, channels passion, and shares creativity in beautiful, collaborative ways.
When she’s not dancing, Terra’s either hanging out with friends, spending time with her partner, or leaning into social services work – a job that’s led her to master emergency protocols, something she explained with pride before our interview.
Follow Terra’s creative dance journey and performances on Instagram: @terra_artist_love.
Discover more ecstatic dance inspiration and ideas in my previous posts:
- “5 Free-Form Dance Concepts to Inspire Your Practice”
- “How One Devoted Ecstatic Dancer Builds Self-Trust”
- “How Free-Form Dance Generates Holistic Wellness”
Photo Courtesy of Terra Crowl