Creating Breeds Creating

Susan Dee Imus

Research has demonstrated that the arts have an impact on our health and can be necessary to our well-being; “the arts can really help people stay healthy or recover when illness strikes” (Crawford, 2018, para. 3). Dance/movement therapists are educated in using their dance/ movement expertise and creative process for improving health and fostering wellness. How do dance/movement therapists do this and what language do they use to describe their practice? As a DMT educator in the 21 st century, it has become more challenging to consistently describe what dmts do today and how DMT works. The language often varies from one educator, researcher or practitioner to another as well as one educational institution to another. Cultural consciousness is also motivating the discipline to update its taxonomy with a more discerning lens. This chapter attempts to clarify terms such as approaches/methods/theories and accompanying beliefs, assumptions, core concepts and philosophies. The chapter also helps to differentiate a theoretical framework from laws/principles and mechanisms, and it attempts to highlight the power of an intervention as a creative process.

Individual approaches/methods/theories are the description and communication of one’s personal practice, while beliefs are assumptions, values, core concepts and philosophies. Individual approaches/methods/theories combined with beliefs/values/core concepts/ philosophies are parts of the individual clinician’s theoretical framework for the practice of dance/movement therapy. Most of the literature in the DMT field describes theoretical frameworks. Laws/principles define natural phenomena in a discipline. Mechanisms explain how the laws/principles work. It has only been in the past few years that the profession has deepened into an explanation of laws/principles and mechanisms (Caldwell, 2018; Imus, 2012, 2017; Koch, 2018).

The chapter begins with a very brief introduction to laws/principles followed by an introduction to nine fundamental mechanisms. Dance/movement therapy beliefs are briefly introduced followed by an examination of methods and of the term intervention. A teaching methodology called A-FECT, adapted from Imus and Hervey (2004), is introduced at the conclusion of the chapter as a means of bringing the concepts together.

LAWS

A principle is a law, according to author Stephen R. Covey (2004). Laws in science pertain to matter, while laws in psycholog}' pertain to information (Bechtel, 2008). In DMT, we are influenced by both laws of matter and information. Matter exists in form through the body and its movement, while information exists in feelings, thoughts, images and behaviors—the psychological content or story. It is important to note that separation of the laws of science and psychology is only conceptual, as the matter and information cannot be separated in human experience. Some examples of laws/principles applicable to dance/movement therapy can be located in Christine Caldwell’s recent book (2018). Caldwell articulated eight principles from anatomy, physiology, neurobiology, physics and information processing that are applicable to DMT. They include—oscillation, balance, feedback loops, energyconservation, discipline, contrast through novelty, change, associations and emotions. Caldwell correlated each principle with symbolic values and combines form and content. A few laws that have also influenced my work derive from psychology and aesthetics—proxemics, symmetry operations, rhythmic synchrony, adaptation, perspective, experience and compensation. These principles are the foundation or scaffolding for the mechanisms. I originally began this chapter with a more in-depth look at the laws and their specific correlations to the mechanisms, but it became impossible to pursue this in-depth line of inquiry within the word limitations of the chapter. Further work is in progress.

MECHANISMS

Mechanisms explain how laws/principles work. Let’s take the principle or law of proximity and deconstruct its mechanism within DMT. The law of proximity states that elements that are close together tend to be more related than elements that are farther apart (Moore, 2009). The mechanism for the law of proximity, as in all laws, includes the identification of its component parts. In the case of DMT, one example of component parts in proximity may include the formal descriptors of movement elements through one’s orientation to space, weight, time and flow—Efforts. These movement elements can be formed, embodied or concretized through the creation of movement phrases that are closer (proximal) or farther apart (distal or polarity) in their shared or differentiated effort characteristics. The mechanism is the embodiment of the relationship of effort elements into a movement phrase or dance. These movement elements may become co-constructed by the DMT practitioner and their client into movement phrases to assist with feeling identification and mood regulation. Identifying mechanisms has become widespread in the creative arts therapies over the past four to five years (Caldwell, 2018; Imus et al., 2018; Koch, 2017). I identified nine fundamental mechanisms in DMT (Imus, Young, Downey, & Allen, 2018), though they are presented here in an evolved form, as they have continued to develop.