Somatic movement is a meditation, the experience of being in the moment. Somatic movement is the experience of moving in your body, and being embodied means being present with yourself - how you're feeling, moving, being. When you're dancing an improvisational dance, you are in the moment, letting the dance be created through you. Letting your emotions and feelings be expressed through movement.
Somatic awareness improves your movement flow and therefore your technique. Now, I don't often talk about technique as in some ways I feel like it is too easy to get caught up in how 'good' we are as dancers or creating comparisons between ourselves and others. Focus on improving technique can lead to competition with ourselves in needing or feeling we should be 'better' than we are and not enjoying our dance as it is. However, deepening your somatic awareness, your awareness of your body, will help you physically connect better to your dance partner, there's no doubt about it. It will also help you drop in to that experience of flow in your dance.
Somatic awareness is a huge basis of my focus on dance. Experiencing the bodily awareness of where my weight is when I'm standing or stepping, how I am leaning into my lead or follow and connecting to their body, how my arms, even down to my fingers are finding expression in the music. All of that requires somatic awareness, and the more I attune to my body, the more deliciousness I experience when dancing. I am so passionate about this. Somatic awareness improves your dancing not to be a 'better' dancer to win accolades, but for yourself to be a more embodied dancer.
The next time you take to the dance floor with a partner can you take a moment to bring your presence into your body, tap into the experience of being in your body when you dance and allow the music to move you.