Disability Inclusion in Dance/ Movement Therapy

A 3 Credit In-Person Experiential Continuing Education Course for Mental Health Care Practitioners

When:

Sunday, April 27, 2025

10 AM- 1 PM ET

Location:

Pratt Institue

North Hall, 2nd Floor, Room 210

200 Willoughby Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11205

Pratt Campus Map

Course Description:

In this interactive workshop, the New York-based nonprofit Born Dancing will share a showing of Quartet, performed by four dancers with and without disabilities, and facilitate dialogue to rethink assumptions about dancing bodies. The session will focus on disability inclusion in dance and dance/ movement therapy. It will include a discussion about language and accessibility considerations for people with disabilities as well as the socio-culturally constructed nature of disability. This workshop will include an experimental component exploring mirroring, creativity, and movement through (spatial) perspective inspired by the choreography in Quartet, which uses levels, the power chairs, and a set piece to creatively shift perspectives. The movement experiential will illustrate the creative process of the company and the transformative significance of taking different perspectives and being seen.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify three (3) language and accessibility considerations for working and dancing with persons with disabilities. 

2. Analyze four (4) key aspects of the socio-cultural construction of disability and how this shapes embedded ways of seeing. 

3.  Engage in an experiential creative process of dance to examine the mover/witness dyad and experience the transformative impact of perspective-taking in dance performance and dance movement therapy that considers implications for participants with and without disabilities.

Group Leader:

Lisa Clementi, MS, BC-DMT, LCAT resides in NYC, where her work as a professional dancer for over 20 years – in particular, her work with Robin Becker Dance – has profoundly shaped Lisa’s career as a dance/movement psychotherapist. Having performed Robin Becker’s Into Sunlight where Lisa can also be seen on screen in a critically acclaimed documentary, “Into Sunlight: the film”, a Moving Pictures production, where the theme of the trauma of war is so artfully explored, she began her journey into dance/movement therapy and is Pratt graduate. In addition to performing professionally, Lisa served as a dance/movement therapist with Greenhope Services for Women, assisting incarcerated women at Rikers Island. She currently serves as the Supervising Therapist at The Animation Project working with NYC’s youth in the educational and probation systems. In addition, Lisa has her own private practice while currently dancing with Born Dancing, a company where dancers of all ages and abilities share the stage.

Melissa van Wijk (she/her) is a Choreographer, Dance Educator, and Founder and Director of Born Dancing, a non-profit dance organization based in New York City that creates original dance performances featuring dancers of all ages with and without disabilities and offers dance education and apprenticeships programs to children and teens with disabilities. She is a doctoral candidate in Dance Education at Columbia University, working on her dissertation research that focuses on participatory action with adolescents and young adults with complex disabilities in dance. She holds five NYS Teaching Certifications, including Dance K-12th grade and Students With Disabilities 7th - 12th grade, and has a master’s degree in dance education from NYU. Melissa works in Early Childhood as a Special Education Itinerant Teacher (SEIT) and Early Intervention Specialist.

Dancing Dialogue LCAT LMHC PLLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0066, licensed social workers #SW-0512 and licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0131.