II Research

The Significance of Dance in Dance Movement Therapy: An International Online Survey With DMT Novices

Iris Brduninger and Ulf-Dietrich Reips

INTRODUCTION

Dance movement therapy (DMT) and dance are connected in a one-way dependency: without dance there would not be DMT. Levy (1992) talks about the pioneers of dance movement therapy who all had a strong dance background. For example, Marian Chace had received her dance training with the Denishawn company. Her dance knowledge in folk and ethnic dance and structure likely influenced her practice in using a circle formation and its potential for social interaction among participants. Chace stated that “dance is communication and this fulfills a basic human need” (Levy, 1992, p. 24). Another DMT pioneer, Blanche Evan, was a dancer, choreographer and performer who had been influenced by Birch Larson and “natural dance” (Levy, 1992). Evan used expressive improvisational dance, Spanish and ethnic dance, dance improvisation, and in-depth improvisation. She “stressed dance as the art form which utilizes the most direct and complete connection to the psyche” (Levy, 1992, p. 35). For Evan, apparently, dance improvisation was especially important, as it “is the complete welding of oneself, as you are at the moment with your theme in the terms of dance” (Levy, 1992, p. 40). Mary Whitehouse, a dance movement therapist from the West Coast, had received her dance training at the Mary Wigman School in Dresden, Germany, and was influenced by Martha Graham. Trudi Schoop, a Swiss mime living on the West Coast of the United States, had her first dance recital at the age of 16 at the Schauspielhaus (the main local theatre) in Zurich, Switzerland. Schoop definitely was a DMT pioneer to many of the second generation of dance movement therapists and had made a big impact on DMT in Germany and Switzerland. The German DMT pioneer Fe Reichelt was a master student of Maty Wigman and continues to dance in her nineties (Hillhauser, 2015). Wally Kaechele, also a German DMT pioneer, started off with a dance school for couple dance in the 1950s before developing toward DMT. These few pioneers just named seem to have used their professional dance background to pave the way for the development and foundation of DMT in many countries. DMT pioneers in the UK, however, came from health and education backgrounds, although some had a background in Laban movement (Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK, ADMP UK, 2018). Rudolph von Laban influenced DMT all over the world and especially in Europe with the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA).

Three major themes may come to mind when thinking about DMT’s relation to dance. Throughout history, dance has played an important role as a healing activity. Furthermore, dance has always been an art form for expressing one’s thoughts, emotions, dreams, and conflicts through the body and creative choreographies. Finally, dance has a therapeutic effect that reduces anxiousness, channels aggression, supports social interaction, and fosters transformation (Biasutti, 2013: Brauninger, 2014a, 2014b; Hanna, 1995; Levy, 1992).

DMT has arisen from dance, and the power of dance has consciously been used as an important and specific tool in DMT. Dance has been the basis and core for the foundation of DMT. The following sections explore the three dance aspects and their relation to DMT.

DANCE AS A HEALING ACTIVITY

The use of dance as a catharsis and therapeutic remedy has been described as one of the very early functions of dance (Levy, 1992). Thus dance (Levy, 1992) and ritual dance (Shannon, 1993) have always been healing activities, which have been deeply rooted in human societies. Throughout history, peoples have expressed themselves by moving together in a common rhythm and sharing their emotions by moving together with others (Schmais & White, 1986). Hanna (1995) offered an explanation for dance as a healing activity:

Dance in the healing process appears to involve the possibility of a person gaining a sense of control in at least these four ways: (1) possession dance, (2) mastery of movement, (3) escape or diversion from stress and pain through a change in emotion, states of consciousness, and/or physical capability, and (4) confronting stressors to work through ways of handling their effects.

(Hanna, 1995, p. 329)

DANCE AS AN ART FORM

Different dance techniques represent important roots of DMT (Brauninger, 2014a; Capello, 2007; Cruz, 2012; Stromsted, 2009). Moreover, dance composition, choreography (Brauninger, 2009 2014b; Stromsted, 2009; Willkc, 2007) and stage presentation (Allcgranti, 2009; Victoria, 2012) have their space in DMT sessions. Dance improvisation has been described as “a spontaneous, creative and non-planned movement characterized by the expression of emotions and body feelings” (Biasutti, 2013, p. 126). Dance improvisation has remained an important technique used in DMT (Brauninger, 2014a; Meekums, 2002; Wengrower, 2009), which allows the expression of unconscious feelings and states, a process that could be compared to free association in a psychodynamic therapy (Brauninger, 2014a).

DANCE AS A THERAPEUTIC ACTIVITY

In 1959 Rudolf von Laban promoted the educational and therapeutic value of dance (Laban, 1959). It exceeds the scope of this chapter to give a thorough overview of the evidence of the therapeutic value of dance, but recent systematic reviews on the effect of dance on health-related issues from 2017 to August 2018 shall be covered here. Dance interventions seem to be feasible for the improvement of balance and gait in adults with neurological conditions other than Parkinson’s disease (Patterson, Wong, Prout, & Brooks, 2018). They also seem to foster motor parameters and functional mobility in Parkinson’s patients (dos Santos Dela-bary, Komeroski, Monteiro, Costa, & Haas, 2017) and quality of life in patients in cancer care (Rudolph, Schmidt, Wozniak, Kubin, Ruetters, & Huebner, 2018). Furthermore, dance may strengthen and increase the range of motion in upper limbs in women with breast cancer (Boing, Rafael, de Oliveira Braga, de Moraes, Sperandio, & de Azevedo Guimaraes, 2017). Dance interventions are also improving various physical health outcome measures in adults compared to other forms of physical activity (Fong Yan et al., 2018). However, DMT interventions seem not to reduce falls in older people but may improve their fear of falling Veronese, Maggi, Schofield, & Stubbs, 2017).

As outlined earlier, the pioneers described that their dance roots were crucial to the development and the practice of DMT. The profession was established in some countries a few decades ago and in other countries a few years ago. Meanwhile, the role of DMT is widespread and has been categorized with regard to health care as preventive, curative, rehabilitative, and promotional DMT¹ (Brauninger & Bacigalupe, 2017). Even though these categories focus on health care, they overlap with DMT in educational settings.

The first author’s research showed that dance interventions in DMT are still used and demonstrated promising results: one finding of an RCT (Randomized Controlled Trial) with regard to the improvement of quality of life through DMT (Brauninger, 2012) revealed that dance techniques used by therapists “correlated positively to the improvement of daily life in the short term. In particular, Improvisation {with body contact) was associated with an improvement of Somatization” (Brauninger, 2014a, p. 449). The international Internet-based survey undertaken with practitioners (N= 113) on DMT with the elderly mentioned nine practitioners who stressed the importance of certain dance interventions: They should be used in order to foster participation in elderly people who otherwise may suffer from dependency and feeling they are a burden to others. Those dance interventions included the following: “Choreographing a group dance builds up community, learning simple steps and movement sequences in a circle or folk dance offers successful experiences, . . . Improvisation provides a satisfying feeling about one’s own activity” (Brauninger, 2014b, p. 145).

Despite these testimonies of the value of the dance in DMT, we were wondering if the meaning of dance in DMT may be dwindling and if the importance and the presence of subjects such as psychotherapy, medical science, and neuroscience may increase in importance at the expense of the dance. For this project, we therefore were interested in the question of whether dance would still be crucial to DMT novices nowadays and whether DMT novices would value the importance of our dance heritage.

PROCEDURE AND PARTICIPANTS

Online Survey, and Data Collection with DMT Novices

Online Survey

We created an online survey (see Appendix 1) in order to find out how DMT novices evaluate the importance of dance for DMT. The survey contained questions regarding demographic data (gender, age), country of birth and country of study, level of DMT studies, and end of DMT training (three options: a. “I have just finished recently or less than 12 months ago”, b. “I will finish approximately in the following 6 to 12 months”, c. “I finished more than one year ago”. Participants who checked a or b were considered novices, participants who checked c were considered experts and were used as a control group to the novices. The designation in “novices” and “experts” was chosen in order to differentiate professional beginners with no or little DMT experience from therapists with professional experience). For the following seven questions (q), a 7-point Likert scale (from zero point “very inaccurate” to six points “very accurate”) was provided to the participants to answer the items:

q 1: To have a strong dance background is important in dance movement therapy.

q2: To have a professional dance background is important in dance movement therapy. q3: During my DMT training, we learn how to integrate dance as an intervention.

q4: As a future dance movement therapist, I feel prepared to integrate dance interventions.

q5: My personal dance background is very strong.

q6: In the future, I plan to use non-dance based techniques and interventions.

q7: Non-dance based techniques and interventions are more relevant to DMT than dance.

The online survey was created with WEXTOR (http://wextor.eu, Reips & Neuhaus, 2002), a service provided by the iScience group at University of Konstanz to create and run Inter-net-based experiments and surveys. WEXTOR follows best principles of methodologies for online research and automatically implements many related procedures (see, e.g., Reips, 2010, 2012).

We searched the websites of the American Dance Therapy Associations (ADTA) and the European Association for Dance Therapy (EADMT) for acknowledged DMT training institutions, DMT associations, and potential multiplicators who could distribute the online survey to DMT novices. Additionally, we searched online for DMT programs and professional DMT training institutions that we assumed would offer high-quality DMT training, ideally on a master’s level. We then created a set of addressees to which we planned to send the online survey; we hoped the recipients would want to collaborate and invite their students and former students to take the survey. Before sending off the email message with the link to the survey, we approached two experienced professional international dance movement therapists. They agreed to examine the online survey test version. The survey was revised incorporating their feedback. In total, we approached 55 email contacts of training institutions and DMT associations from 23 countries.² Thus, international study participants were recruited through national institutions, through two mailing lists (German Dance Movement Therapy Association BTD & European Dance Movement Therapy Association EADMT), and various other multiplicators such as heads of DMT master programs and DMT institutions. We sent two types of email letters with the online survey:³ (1) one type of email letter was sent to two mailing lists (one to the EADMT, the other to the German dance movement therapy association BTD. For the email letter, please see Appendix 2; (2) the second type of email letter was sent to the heads of DMT master’s programs and DMT institutions; for the email letter to the multiplicators, please see Appendix 3. No reminder was sent and data was analyzed ten weeks later.

We planned on extracting country-specific answers in order to evaluate whether national differences would exist.