How a Dance Class in Prison Helped Inmates Find Some Freedom
Brian Seibert
An arts program in a California state facility disproves the idea that “nobody dances in prison,” encouraging inmates to channel their lives and emotions into movement.
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Think of men in prison and you probably don’t think of dancing. But that’s what some at the California Institution for Men here were doing — dancing for invited guests.

It might not have seemed like much: some walking, some running, a bit that resembled Duck Duck Goose. Yet the men were moving freely in an environment that restricts and regulates motion. They were moving together, suddenly vulnerable, physically open, trusting — in ways that regular prison culture and the lives that led them to prison had taught them not to be. The dance was allowing the men to be seen, and to see themselves, differently.

The performance was the graduation ceremony for a new program called Embodied Narrative Healing, a class that is at once representative of changing norms in American prisons and quite unusual. From one angle, it’s part of a nationwide effort to turn away from retribution and punishment toward rehabilitation and healing, sometimes through the arts. In California, after a funding drought in the 2000s, arts programs in prisons have been expanding since 2013, with programs in all state facilities since 2017.