Life is Dance: The Art and Science of Dance, Therapy Movement
By Hilda Wengrower and Sharon Chaiklin
Publisher: Gedisa
Spanish Language
Chapter written by Suzi Tortora.
The Ways of Seeing program – Dance movement psychotherapy in early childhood treatment.
Scientific recognition of body-mind paradigm and its implications to a comprehensive health has been gradual but steady since the middle of last century, when dancers like Mary Whitehouse and Marian Chace began to wonder what were the reasons that people who engage in the dance thought attending professional classes. Today we can not dismiss the body as a source of information and as a place of healing and manifestation of the disease, both physical and mental. Our positions and movements, the way we occupy space, analog and symbolically speak of tensions, emotions, relationships with others and life stories. Life is dance is probably the most rigorous and comprehensive presentation in Castilian of Dance Movement Therapy, an emerging interdisciplinary profession has evolved from a synthesis between the art of movement and dance and psychology. A discipline that can intervene effectively in the fields of mental health, special education, rehabilitation and, in general, wherever there is suffering and disability, but may also contribute to the prevention and health care. The various authors who participate in this work make us sharers in her/his own specialty and her/his contributions as dance therapists experienced in clinical, teaching and research, and although they differ in varying degrees with respect to their cultures or theoretical perspectives, they all share the basic tenets of DMT: The conception of human beings as body-mind unit movement and dance as an expression of that unity. Recognition of the therapeutic potential of creative and artistic action and movement in particular. The notion of a therapeutic relationship based on distinction between work performed by a dance teacher and a professional.