What is the Dance therapy?
The Dance therapy is born of dance in its simplest form: the natural and spontaneous movements of the human being. It is a body technique that interrelates art (dance) and science (psychology) for the care of health problems and learning in the process of integration psychophysics.
Expression interiority of people through dance – movement allows the emergence and subsequent development of creativity, expression and responsiveness by promoting the acceptance of oneself and others. Through individual and / or group work, the aim is getting a more secure body.
Dance term is extremely broad and includes many activities ranging from natural or instinctive practices of some animals to the most elaborate artistic creations.
In its constant need for communication, we describe four ways or paths traveled by the dance in its continuous evolution:
The four tracks of dance, but with its own characteristics and dominance in different eras, but are not mutually exclusive: the therapeutic pathway incorporates aspects of all previous ones.
Dance therapy: What the name means?
Two languages. The dance and the clinician, and a subject who is in practice. Dance involves an assignment to the field of health.
The conception of man is changing, incorporating elements of different sciences and moving towards a more complex and specialized world.
What is the reason of art, in this case the art of dance, entering the health field? Among all the expressions of man, art has always looked bold and transgressive; the art looks at the subject with the eyes of the interior in relation to the outside world, with the eye of the creative impulse at an event beyond the rational. Just for this reason that, contrary to what puzzling and inexplicable to the human emotions and reactions arise from the mid-twentieth century based therapeutic intrinsically expressive art of looking closer to the understanding of the subject who suffers it.
The Dance therapy offers the possibility to transgress operational concepts established by the company, it is the ability to feel joy, confidence and security. Allows the possibility of transforming to create a response to new situations, and create a new answer to old situations. The technique promotes an attitude of active patients, turning them into protagonists of their own healing by providing tools and plan to continue their lives. There are no limitations on age, sex, social status, the availability of motion or level of intellectual development for the different people who moved into this process.
The Dance therapist
The preventive purpose of the therapist is nothing more than a subject, so the dance therapist must be aware of their actions, you will know if their intervention is effective only if you recognize their movements. This is not a random question: is the passage from theoretical and experimental whole to drive and sustain treatment.
The dance therapists practice in several areas: educational, recreational, rehabilitation and clinical results. The concept of health as the ability to learn. Health is not stereotyped, is the possibility of opening up new forms of expression and operation.
Its function is to open communication channels to facilitate the interplay of the person through dance, music, silence, the game, writing, drawing, speech, mood and object brokers.
Their tools allow them to delineate their role:
- Organizing the work of another body through different creative stimuli.
- Building trust in the group.
- Listening to suspending judgments and prejudices.
- Listening to permit the opening up emergence of the new.
- Working on the emerging individual and group activities.
Applications of dance
In one way or another, the Dance is for everyone. We mention a few:
- Through expressive movement, children come into contact with different spatial and temporal notions. In working with children, it allows the spontaneous emotions and needs to speak out permanently, and, as adults, are reflected in them: the need for attention, approval, respect, acceptance, support, encouragement, be taken into account, to be loved.
- In the case of isolated or shy kids, suffering some kind of rejection of the group, experience with the body by the pace can mobilize the means of communication within them. Why I live and for what? It becomes the key.
- Not hearing (deafness and hearing loss) does not mean not being able to think or feel. For a listener, the silence is not profound and permanent, for those affected by deafness may be without color, a deep hole because there is no auditory memory, silence is the everyday. The method finds the language contained in the body so that they can dance with words, shapes, colors and rhythm in their expression.
- In the case of the blind child or adult, Dance therapy tries to awaken the sleepy expressiveness and be a bridge to meet their own body, without the physical rigidity that usually have.
- Mental Disability: the dance therapist work on the person on the move, but not a syndrome or disease, which does not mean the unknown nature of the pathology. They are looking to propose, speak, listen, read, beyond the thing itself, of being paralyzed or brain of Down syndrome or anything else, so that in the clinical arena is put into play the words and actions a person rather than a syndrome.
- Physical disability: body language is very old, it is primitive, primary and dancing is something as natural than to be together and integrate our system taken away by the idea of specialization. All bodies have a language, and this has nothing to do with how the body is. The dance therapis wonders about the unique history of that body, of bodily suffering, their body schema and body image of their operation in the clinic trying to rescue the subject in the movement – dance is staged.
- In our culture, we do not think that in certain circumstances it is difficult and sometimes impossible to communicate through them. This is true for most of the mental patients (psychiatric) sometimes so severely damaged that may have lost contact with the world around them (psychosis).
- Neurosis: without having to go to extreme cases, we know that this is also the case for anyone who suffers an emotional or a state of deep melancholy or concern or depression, found it difficult to hold a conversation beyond a few minutes. This is where the movement can allow the presentation and communication necessary because the muscles are those that contain the emotions.
- Eating disorders: patients with any eating disorder (anorexia, bulimia, obesity) have distorted their body image, low self-esteem and poor self-concept, often raised issues of interpersonal relationships, and having difficulty in identifying feelings. Through the Dance, patients are encouraged to recognize the tension in their bodies as a sign of emotion. This recognition allows control and take healthy choices to replace the self-eaters and purging cycles. Your feelings may be expressed symbolically in motion.
Graciela Vella,
Dancer – Dance Teacher – Dance therapist
Integral Director of the School of Dance.