You don’t need rhythm to find your feet – and your people.
Shut Up & Dance is a thriving, no-skills-needed dance class in Wellington. But a decade ago, it began with a simpler idea: a couple of friends discovering their pal had studied dance and nagging her to teach them
Beyoncé’s Single Ladies routine.
When Clair Thomas met Lesa MacLeod-Whiting and Abby Damen through a mutual friend in 2016, Clair had moved to Wellington from Britain. She’d taken the leap of faith to join her now-husband, but found herself craving community and connection.
“I thought it was just chatter leading to friendship, but they’re Kiwis, and Kiwi people get things done,” Thomas says, with a laugh. “They booked a hall and organised a six-week block. The three of us became the founding members. I’ve always been the creative director, while Lesa and Abby handled administration, marketing, accounts and everything else.”
Clair Thomas is the founder of Shut Up & Dance.
Thomas could never have imagined how important the project would become. It’s crucial to her mental wellbeing and uplifted her when she was in the darkest trenches of postpartum despair.
“Our hard lines have always been clear: no photos, no videos, and no mirrors. It’s not about what you look like; it’s about the feeling. Every week is different, so there aren’t people at the front making you feel terrible, and it’s not a cliquey group. I wanted everyone to be in it together.”
Thomas says there’s a real surrender in getting through the fear.
“Dance can be intimidating and bring all your insecurities to the surface, but there’s something magical about people coming together, feeling a little broken and then feeling secure. They don’t know what they look like, and it’s different every week. People laugh and people cry.”
She practises what she preaches at home, too.
“Even on your own, you can put your AirPods in and bounce around. It helps me sometimes when my children are making me reach that point of ‘what’s going on?’ I’ll be like, ‘what song should we put on, guys?’ Usually, my daughter chooses Pitbull’s Fireball. It’s embarrassing, but it’s good energy and they can just scream ‘Fireball!’”
Shut Up & Dance is Thomas’ fulltime job and, as a business owner, the work is busy but fulfilling. She worked up until she was 38 weeks pregnant with her first child.
At that time she felt good and nothing indicated she’d have a traumatic birth.
But she did, and although she and her son Hugo recovered – he’s 7 now and her daughter Sophie is 5 – he spent a week in the NICU, and once they got home, things didn’t get easier.
Shut Up & Dance founder Clair Thomas, pictured with her son Hugo when she was pregnant with her daughter Sophie.
“For the first 12 weeks, I felt awful. He must have been in pain and wasn’t getting enough milk, and he cried and cried,” Thomas remembers. “You go from an independent life – I was exercising four or five times a day because of my job and constantly with people – to being at home exhausted. Exercise isn’t for my body; it’s for my mind and keeps my brain functioning.”
Overwhelmed, she flew back to England to be with family.
“I was jet-lagged, still caring for a baby and my body wasn’t producing milk. It was a recipe for disaster and I shouldn’t have done it, but I needed to go home. I don’t think I was mentally well.”
Back in New Zealand, Thomas found out about Little Shadow, a perinatal distress support charity based in Wellington providing in-person mental wellbeing programmes and low-cost counselling, in person and online.
She regrets not going along.
“I remember seeing a nurse at the GP and filling out a form. She was someone I knew from class, so I was chatting and happy to see her. Because of my energy, she probably thought everything was fine, but she had to give me the details for Little Shadow and suggest I talk to someone. I took the leaflets and didn’t read them. I thought, ‘I’m fine; I don’t need help’. I genuinely didn’t feel worthy of help. I felt like a failure and I experienced a lot of rage, which isn’t spoken about often.”
What Thomas experienced is common. About one in five people who give birth in Aotearoa experience perinatal anxiety or depression, which is the period during pregnancy or after the birth of a child.
Thomas says speaking about it helps ease the burden for parents.
“I’m sure lots of people have lovely postpartum experiences, but for many of us it’s not fun. Some people are lucky, but a lot of the time it’s really, really f***ing hard. People need to talk about it more because that makes mums less lonely.”
Much like the community Thomas has created at Shut Up & Dance, Little Shadow is rooted in collective healing. Its seven-week group support programme, He Waka Eke Noa (We’re all in this together) aims to improve the wellbeing and resilience of parents through building a strong peer support network. Their shared kaupapa led to a recent collaboration, where Shut Up & Dance organised a fundraiser for the charity.
Clair Thomas teaching a routine during a Shut Up & Dance class.
“We want to pay it forward for parents who are struggling,” Thomas says. “Some parents are no longer with us because their mental health couldn’t handle it. We need to look after one another. When parents are healthy and supported, they can literally change the world.”
“The routine we learned was to Rihanna’s We Found Love in a Hopeless Place. It felt like it was about how, when you’re in the depths of postpartum depression or going through real, difficult times, the people who are there for you are the love.”
Shut Up & Dance offers daily classes in locations across the Wellington region. Aucklanders can book a one-off pop-up event this Saturday, October 18, and those in Christchurch can try a six-week Pop Icons course from October 31. Shutupanddance.co
Postpartum depression
If you feel you may be struggling with postpartum depression, please know that you are not alone and help is available.
Talk to your midwife, Well Child Tamariki Ora nurse, or doctor.
Need to talk now? Free call or text 1737 or call the Depression Helpline on 0800 111 757 or the PlunketLine on 0800 933 922.
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
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