WHAT IS DANCE FOR ME: DMT STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIONS OF THEIR EXPERIENCE WHILE DANCING
At the beginning of the introductory course to DMT that I teach in a master’s program, students are invited to explore, through an improvisation, what dancing means for each one of them. The aim is to reflect on the experiential significance of dance for themselves and integrate it with theoretical and research-based knowledge. The second step is to write a selfreport that is shared verbally and discussed in the group. I also teach a course for experienced professionals (10-20 years in DMT), and the purpose is to bring them back to their motives for choosing to study this profession and to refresh the value of dance for them and for their clients.
In this section, I shall present the thematic analysis of students’ answers to the question about their experience while dancing. The order of presentation is based from higher to lower frequency of the themes mentioned. Each line brings expressions from a different student, and most of the respondents wrote answers that fit into more than one category. The final theme, serenity, was only mentioned by one individual but has been included because it is often seen and expressed during therapy.
The answers from the professionals’ group carry the knowledge accumulated along their years of study and work; the influence of the practice of Authentic Movement" and Winn-icott’s concept of true self are transparent. Three professionals and five students in the regular track of learning allowed the use of their texts. All excerpts are included with the written permission of the authors. Similarities with the testimonies of professional dancers and early dmts already discussed in this chapter can be found in these discussions.
Authenticity
Authenticity as experiencing a self true to itself, a “wholeness of being” (Koch, 2017, p. 89; Cohen, her chapter in this book).
It is an opportunity to feel and revive the linkages between me and me being in this moment, between parts of myself, between me and significant persons in my life, between me and what surrounds. An authentic encounter with the present and history.
To move in an authentic way. Without wanting to please anybody or to be aesthetic.
Connection to the authentic, to myself.
The freedom to be who I want to be the way I want to be, without thinking or asking myself: is this right? Is this correct? When I know there is no correct-incorrect, it releases me from pleasing, I trust my body and whatever it brings is received with love.
I feel sincere and genuine when I dance, without masks.
Way of life. My natural place.
Vitality and Positive Affects
As mentioned earlier, vitality’s core meaning relates to feeling positively alive (Birringer, 2005; Stern, 2010) and present in the moment (Fraleigh, 1998).
I connect to my bones, my strengths, myself. Interesting these words arc connected in Hebrew [they have the same root, three basic letters12]. Liveliness. Groove in my body. Rising mood. Body work uplifts my mood.
Dance for me is life, life’s joy, the essence of life.
Joy-
Serenity.
Adrenalin entering into the body, bursting energy.
Support, daring, jump, strength, playing, intensiveness, young girl.
An invitation to the movement of life.
It reassures me. Strengthens me. Pleasure, joy, spontaneity, creativity.
My existence in the world is confirmed, it gets meaning, vitality.
Presence/Embodiment
Presence as being entirely in the moment (Fraleigh, 1998) has been considered healing “in and of itself” (Sheperd, Brown, & Greaves, 1972 in Geller & Greenberg, 2002) which obviously includes being in the body, one of the meanings of the construct of embodiment.
Femininity, passion, both.
My existence in the world is confirmed, it gets meaning, vitality.
Dance is the space where my body isn’t a slave to the mind’s will and to social norms, it can move freely, rounded, confused, reversed, connected and disconnected to its own wish, and be a significant presence, existing and supporting my life, my life’s meaning in present matchless moments.
To flow regulated with less exertion, this teaches me to trust and accept.
ConnectionXdisconnection, touch, sensation, balanceXunbalanced, weight shifting, leaning, floor, supported.
Feelings and sensations move in me incessantly, and the body moves with them.
Healing
Dancing provides experiences of healing, which is clearly manifested in the following answers:
Dancing allows me to go on and surpass obstacles and challenges on the way.
Movement heals me.
To flow regulated with less exertion, this teaches me to trust and accept
Freedom
People dancing experience freedom through bodily self-awareness, self-assurance, and self-expression (Frichtel, 2019)
The freedom to be who I want to be.
Move freely
Freedom to listen to body-mind and express...
Makes me feel free
Self-Awareness
Freedom to listen to body-mind and express...
I learned to listen to my body that said to me to separate from my boyfriend.
I feel.
. . . dynamics, weariness, pain, disappointment because unfulfilled expectations of a dance that did not get to be what I wanted.
Expression of Feelings
A way to express feelings. From childhood until now I find it difficult to express myself or to articulate a critique verbally.
Freedom to listen to body-mind and express...
BRIEF DISCUSSION
Professionals recalled authenticity with higher frequency than students. Their responses and conceptualizations of authenticity clearly connect to Winnicott s concept of true self and strengthen Koch’s (2017) identification of art making as contributing to authenticity or having an integrative function. Vitality appears recurrently in the sample presented. It is felt while dancing and is communicated both in bodily and emotional terms (adrenalin, bones) and more frequently in psychological terms (daring, the essence of life, strengthens, and so on). Vitality also appears in sentences written by Sondra Fraleigh (1987, 1998) and Langer
(1953), especially in Langer’s concept of virtual power. She mentions the magnetic power between the dancers; Weber, who studied her work, stated that dance is a means for intersubjectivity, interbeing. Curiously enough, there is no mention of the experience of dancing in a group or with another person in the texts received from the students. Maybe the question asked and the fact that the movement exploration was a solo improvisation focused respondents on their experience of moving alone.
Other statements on vitality in dance as a vital part of culture, either watching or actively dancing, come from Birringer (2005), an artist and scholar, and Daniel Stern (2010) who wrote that the arts dedicated more attention to this aspect of experience than psychology. “They have had to do so, as they want to express the aliveness and vitality of human movement and sound” (Ibid., p. 89). Sheets Johnstone (2015) wrote about dance as a total phenomenon in which the dancer only arrives at the experience of vitality when they is completely one with the dance. Fraleigh (1998) asserted that there is a feeling of “radiant power,” of being wholly present and connected to the world when the dancer is intensely aware of their movement. As if echoing this sentiment, one student said that her presence in the world is confirmed when dancing. This expression can be seen as one of the precious moments experiencing pure presence, as Fraleigh (1998) wrote, or feeling alive and real as another respondent explicitly stated. Dance, with its simultaneous connection to the ground and its emotional appeal, allows for self-perception and enhances it. Presence, vitality, and aliveness are closely linked in the experience of the dancing person.
Healing was experienced while dancing, it encouraged confrontation of challenges, and acceptance of facts and emotions. Summarizing: the verbal expressions of the students resonate with several of the ideas about the dancing experience brought before. Further research will look into patients’ dancing experience.
POSITIVITY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS .AND DMT
Positive psychology’ chose to research health mechanisms, positive experiences and traits in personality, and integrated them in clinical work. Psychoanalyst Mariam Alizade (2002/2010) proposed to persist with the traditional psychoanalytical work while at the same time consolidating healthy aspects of the person.
Alizade asserted that together with tears, treatment should be open to laughter and joy. Pulling on her reading of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Castoriadis, and other philosophers who wrote about vitality, creation, and becoming, she amalgamated their thoughts against predetemination or unique paths of development as an affirmative conception of being human. Alizade related to constructive aspects of the person, both conscious and unconscious, the capacity not to stick to conflict, and stated that building health in treatment is as important as confronting mental illness. She found that positivity spreads through associations, cannot be touched/translated verbally, and it is not always representable and thinkable: it is apparent in actions. We can conclude that positivity demands the therapist to be open to perceive it. According to her, the ideology of focusing on suffering during therapy has iatrogenic risks and acts as an epistemological barrier that blinds professional sight. Western culture and psychodynamic psychotherapy have often focused on seriousness, sorrow, and verbalization. Cheerfulness and trivial things have been considered meaningless/superficial, expecting that positive affects will arise by themselves as an effect of healing; therefore, their study was neglected. After reviewing research in neuroscience and in developmental and social psychology, psychoanalyst Music (2009) asserted that psychotherapeutic work on the hopeful and positive aspects of the person has to be promoted.
DMT is well equipped to incorporate positivity in its scope: it accesses the nonverbal, encompassing the positive aspects of the person, enabling playful and creative exploration and performing different ways of being and seeing in the present and imagining the future (Summers, 2005), accompanying the patient in a process of healthy vital embodiment.
