We recently connected with Gabrielle Rivero and have shared our conversation below.

Gabrielle, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I was 17 when I heard for the umpteenth time that, “dance was for nothing but the devil”. But in my shock, this time I responded back, “Well, why can’t we change that?”. As a child I loved dance, I felt free, whole, and seen when I moved. However, in my community, dance was not valued or respected, and I wanted to change that.

In the Fall of 2012, I started a nonprofit organization, Heartbeat of the Arts, while simultaneously receiving my BS in Recreation and Event Management, and a double minor in dance and non-profit leadership. During my time leading Heartbeat of The Arts, which was an afterschool arts program for at-risk youth, I saw how the children were using dance to find healing, safety, and refuge from their constantly changing world.

I remember one of my students, who was nine at the time, arrived at the after-school program looking agitated from his day. I asked him if he was okay, and he quickly responded, “No, I had a bad day at school”, I reacted and said, “Oh, do you want to talk about it?”, and unexpectedly he responded, “No, I just want to dance it out”. His response taught me that dance was not just a performance art, but could also be a healing art.

This led me to move to Los Angeles to train in my craft as a dancer and to research societal perceptions of the body and of movement. In LA, I received an MA in Theology to understand the rejection of dance within theology to better understand how to help our culture accept and embrace movement as an everyday practice.

In my research, I learned how the early philosophers, Plato and Phaedo, rejected their bodies so that they could become one with God. To these philosophers, the body was something they needed to be separated from because the body held passions, emotions, and sensations that could not be controlled. But in their rejection of the body, they rejected the emotions, and in their rejection of the emotions, they rejected dance.

With that connection, I learned if I wanted to change how we viewed dance within our culture, I would need to address how we engage with the emotions and the body.

But I didn’t know what that could look like on a practical level until my 4-year-old came home from preschool full of anger. I saw him upset, and I responded as I usually do, by telling him to process his big feelings in his crying chair, and I invited him to come back when he was ready. I walked away thinking the situation was handled, but he escalated. Toys began flying across the room, and the room filled with his screams. During his tantrum, I asked myself the question, “How can I show him that his emotions are not bad but need to be expressed in safer ways that do not harm himself, others, or his environment?”.

It was at this moment that my 10 years of research coalesced into a practicable method.
I nervously stated, “shake the anger with your head” and with awkwardness, he shook. I continued, “Now, take the anger off from your shoulders”, with confusion, he pulled. “Now, take the anger off from your chest”, with suspicion, he yanked. I continued to the feet, and with assurance, I said, “Okay, now get the anger out from your feet”, and with confidence, he stomped. I ended, “Now, with your whole body remove all your anger”, Without hesitation, he danced.

At 30, I learned what we were missing from our Western society. I watched my child move anger through his body and out of his body, without shame or fear, but just with movement. But the greatest surprise is what came next. After he finished releasing his anger from his body, he was smiling and laughing, I asked him, “Kiddo, what was wrong?”, and he responded, “Mommy, my head was hurting”. I chuckled, and said, “Bud, I can help you with that”. He received the help he needed because he was able to express the big emotion of anger through his body and out of his body, which allowed him to verbalize his true needs.

After doing this guided dance practice with my children and myself, I have found that our moods were better, our tantrums were smaller, and we became more willing to invite each emotion in as they came because we are fully able to express and release them to go. Watching the benefits for myself and my family I wanted to offer this type of experience to others, so in the Fall of 2022, I created my first movement workshop, where the participants were invited to learn how to accept their emotions, express these emotions through movement, and ultimately release these emotions from the self.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into this industry because I wanted to change the way our Western culture understood movement and dance. I was frustrated by the performative aspects of dance and the lack of cultural expressions of movement. I wanted to reimagine dance as an accessible communal expression that any individual could engage with, without the need for technique or training. I wanted to see individuals find healing through movement the same way that I did. Unfortunately, my research showed that it was not as simple as creating a movement class that removed the performer and audience aspect, as many individuals felt that dance was inaccessible to them.

They understood dance as movement styles like ballet, jazz, hip-hop, salsa, and many others. They did not understand dance as movement, or like the Oxford definition states, “a series of movements that match the speed and rhythm of a piece of music.” I then expand that definition to include movements that match the speed and rhythm of music, silence, or the rhythm of your life.

But then that leaves us with this pivotal question, “what is movement?”

Movement is everything. Movement is breath, movement is sleeping, movement is walking, movement is breathing, movement is swaying, movement is even standing still. We engage with the world every day through movement.
I began this company to help individuals learn how to express emotions through movement. I wanted to create intentional spaces for people to know it is okay to not be okay through movement. But what I did not know was that I was addressing a mental health need that has been overwhelming America. What I did not know, was that I was giving people tools to heal, process, and release trauma, sensations, and emotions from the self.

By helping my 4-year-old child process his big emotion of anger through movement, I began helping many others learn how to embody the emotions they feel to accept them, express them, to release them.

Now, we offer virtual and in-person workshops to help adults, employees, and kids heal their unprocessed emotions by creating safe spaces for communities to re-imagine their narratives through movement. We offer licensing to give professionals access to our methodology so that they can provide accessible movements to their clients. We offer after-school and in-school programs to support the efforts of teachers, guidance counselors, and principals to help students learn how to express their overwhelming emotions through safe movement practices.

Through this access to our methodology, we are hoping to help individuals become more confident and comfortable expressing their emotions through movement so that we can create a culture of catharsis and joy, as communities learn how to express and release overwhelming emotions. We watch individuals move from a complete disconnection from the self to a complete embodiment of the self and the emotions. Clients come in and say they are unable to cry, express, or feel, and they walk away releasing tears, joy, and anger from the self. They watch their transformation and stand in awe of the safety they feel in their body, oftentimes going from disconnection or even self-hate to self-love and acceptance of their imperfections. Through our method, we reimagine dance, the emotions, and the body as a thing to be listened to, cared for, and loved.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have spent much of my life pivoting since the plans I have made for my career have not exactly panned out the way I expected.

For 12 years, I have been asking the question, “How do we normalize dance within our American culture to be used for stress relief, self-expression, and coping with life’s daily stressors?” With this as my goal, I went on a warpath trying to understand the different ways that dance has been rejected within our American history. To understand this rejection, I went to Fuller Theological Seminary to learn about this rejection of movement through the lens of faith, and to learn about our historical framework of movement and the body. But I left Fuller with more questions than answers.

I wanted to learn more about this rejection of movement and the body because, as a black female, I thought the only way to create real change within our culture was to receive a Ph.D.. Since black women are often overlooked and under-heard in our American society. I thought this would let me have a voice. However, the entrance requirements to get into the Ph.D. program kept changing for me.

At first, I needed to clearly state and define my thesis question before entering the program. After extensive research and much guidance from different professors, I did that. Then, I needed to know Latin and preferably German before getting into the program, so I learned Latin while already knowing Hebrew, Greek, and Spanish. After learning all the languages and demonstrating extensive research on my topic, I was still met with maybes and uncertainty by the university.

One day, one of my white, male classmates in an advanced Latin course told me that he was already a student in the Ph.D. program that I wanted to enter. He was taking Latin to help him read primary documents but was still unsure about the specifics of his thesis. Was it my race that prohibited my entrance? Was it my gender that blocked me? Or was it purely a lack of interest in my research topic? Regardless, I decided I was done trying to become enough in the eyes of academia, and I let go of my dream to pursue academia. But it is funny how pivots work; while I was lamenting the loss of academia and the potential Ph.D., I found myself with more answers than questions.

I started looking at the years of research that I had conducted and started seeing the patterns, the results, and then I saw my changed response. I switched from a theoretical response to a practical one, creating a company that has found a solution to emotional health and wellness that many of us did not even know existed, all because life challenged me to pivot.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn is that being black is not a chain, but rather my crown.

I was born in a small town in FL, where we resided for the first few years after my birth. I remember the teeth of the dogs that aggressively barked and chased us as our nearby neighbors informed us that they trained their dogs to attack black people. I remember my family talking about how the KKK would ride through the streets to strike fear into the black families in the town.

I was privileged in the eyes of other black families, as my father was a lawyer and we lived amongst the white people who couldn’t understand why we could afford a home or why we could attend the same functions that they could attend. I was taught as a young girl which houses we could not go around, which neighbors were not too friendly, and how to assimilate into a culture that was often not too fond of me because of my skin color.

Race was something that I could not hide from but was something I tried to forget. For me, my race felt like chains that were pushing me out of spaces when people would assume my economic status, my educational background, or my physical abilities as they were all tied to my race. For years being black felt too scary to embrace, as I tried to keep my hair permed to assimilate into the white culture. But now, I see my blackness as my crown as I embrace my natural hair and find myself freely embracing my locs.

I find myself embracing my skin color, as I am invited to spaces that are race-specific, as many in the black community are trying to provide resources to one another so that we can all achieve greatness. I now receive resources, from grants to mentorship to even investors for being a black-owned business. 10 years ago, if I were to receive the label of Historically Underrepresented Business (HUB) it would have felt like another chain that was keeping me out of spaces, but instead, it is now a crown that invites me into spaces that I did not even know existed.

For much of my life, being black has felt like my chain, but now I see my blackness as my crown.

Contact Info:

• Website: expressnrelease.com
• Instagram: @expressnrelease
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExpressnRelease
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/express-release-therapeutic-dance/

Image Credits
Will Argueta