Dance Movement Therapy, Past and Present: How History Can Inform Current Supervision

Abstract

Background: In looking at the history of dance movement therapy (DMT), three stages of professional focus are identified: Emotional body/movement; verbal processing as it relates to body/movement; and movement analysis and observation tools. Models of supervision for young DMT therapists appear to have paralleled two of these stages, and not the third. This article aims to address a need in the field of DMT in the area of therapist-supervision. Sources of Evidence: A literature review covering the history of DMT, and the existing supervision models in DMT and their effects, provides support for the author’s argument. Main Argument: The author proposes to parallel the third stage of focus in DMT’s development. Namely, it suggests integrating movement-analysis and observation tools into the existing models of supervision. While many existing models benefit from experience-based supervision, there is a need for a professional distance from the supervision material. This could be achieved by using methods of movement observation and analysis, developed in the field of DMT. One of these methods would be combined with the experiential aspects of supervision, and thus provide both inner understanding, and outer perspective, leading to greater therapeutic insight. Conclusions: This article is of importance to DMT supervisors and therapists, as well as to other professionals who view supervision as an integral part of training. It clarifies the importance of structured analysis approaches when using verbal and nonverbal work in supervision, to create an appropriate distance from the supervision material.

Keywords: Dance Movement TherapySupervisionAuthentic MovementMovement-analysis tools

Introduction

This paper introduces a fresh perspective on the history of dance movement therapy (DMT). It will make use of this insight to shed light on the existing practices of DMT supervision, and suggest how supervision in this field might be improved. The need for a new stage in DMT supervision will be presented, one that involves using analytic, professional language, in addition to the personal, emotional language that is dominant in many experiential supervision models. This will allow supervisees a measure of professional distance from the material, and add an important and clarifying dimension to the supervision.

In reviewing the development of this profession, three main stages of professional focus were identified:

1. The significance of the body and its movement as actors in generating emotional change, as well as reflecting emotional changes that occur (Motion-Emotion).

2. An emphasis on words as revealing information stored in the body/movement, as well as playing a role in creating the body/movement (Form-Information).

3. The development of movement analysis and observation tools, which bring conscious attention to implicit and explicit information, and to revealed and hidden layers (Gabron, 2014; Shahar-Levy, 2015 Stern, 2013).

These three stages of focus find certain parallels in the sub-field of DMT supervision. In contemplating the development of supervision in this profession as it appears in the literature, the two initial stages can be seen. One is movement-based, or embodied, models of supervision, in which supervises are invited to do body-movement work; and the other is verbal models of supervision, in which the central way of processing the therapist’s work is through verbal discussion. There are also models that combine these two focuses, using both verbal and nonverbal modes of working (Panhofer, Payne, Meekums, & Parke., 2011). However, while movement analysis tools may be incorporated into student-training, or used as descriptive or quantitative tools in research, a literature review on this subject found no supervision models employing movement analysis tools. This is striking due to the significant professional attention that these tools and approaches have received over the course of the development of DMT.

2. A Review of Dance/Movement Therapy and Three Main Areas of Focus

DMT is one of the creative arts therapies: psychotherapeutic modalities that also include art, music, and drama therapy. DMT uses movement and dance for psychotherapeutic purposes, utilizing aspects of body-movement expression, creativity in dance, and insights of psychotherapy. This medium can enhance the integration of an individual's physiology and psychology (Weiner & Craighead, 2010). DMT emphasizes creativity as a source of change, while maintaining the importance of the relationship between therapist and client (Wengrower, 2009). It is based on the insight that processing one’s unconscious begins with awareness of the body and its movement.

DMT is based on a multi-disciplinary knowledge of the body and the psyche, integrating theories and methods from individual and group psychotherapy (Weiner & Craighead, 2010); nonverbal communication (e.g. Davis, 1982); body-motion development; and developmental psychology (Kestenberg, 1975; Shahar-Levy, 2015). DMT analyzes qualities of movement, and utilizes systems of movement analysis (Laban, 1974; Kestenberg Amighi, Loman, Lewis, & Sossin, 1999; Shahar-Levy, 2015). However, within the multitude of influences underlying DMT practice and theory, it is possible to identify three central focuses. The three areas of focus that were identified did not develop linearly over the course of DMT’s development. Rather they were explored, in parallel or at different times, by DMT pioneers. Integrated and interwoven, they create the basis for the complex tool that is DMT.

The first stage of focus is the mutual influence between body, motion and emotion. The second stage involves the use of words, which reveal the information “held” in the form of the body and in its movement; as a result of integrating psychological theories into DMT, it is possible to relate to the existing connections between form and information (Stanton-Jones, 1992; Wengrower, 2009). Lastly, there is the area of movement analysis and observation models, which allow therapists to relate to the implicit and explicit information in an objective manner. DMT relates to emotive body-movement, to verbal language, and to cognitive processing of the information presented.

Panksepp (1982), in his psychobiological model shows the mutual influence between emotion and physical and motor processes, and also the mutual influence between emotions and perception, thought, and cognition (Northoff et al., 2006). The similarity between the foundations of DMT and Panksepp’s description of the relationship between emotion, body-movement, and cognition in his psycho-biological model strengthens the importance of all three focuses in DMT; they are each significant, and interact with one another in complex and important ways that optimize the therapeutic process.

Sherborne (1990) argued that movement serves, at its core, as a tool that enhances emotions and serves as a basis for cognitive learning and development. Koff (2000) claimed that movement is the most basic form of experience and communication, allowing people to connect their senses and actions, with self-awareness and emotional response. Movement often invites social interaction, and provides practice and advancement in this sphere (Shuval, 2006). Movement is essential to survival, to understanding one’s environment, to adapting to it and controlling it, and to connecting with others (Gilliom, 1970).

Thus movement impacts a person’s functioning in the three areas of body-movement, emotion, and verbal-cognition, all of which support development and are necessary for human existence. These insights are incorporated into the foundations of DMT. This approach to movement sets the stage for the DMT perspective, which combines the three stages of focus delineated above. All three focuses are of equal importance.

3. DMT Supervision

DMT and supervision in DMT are two different kinds of professional meetings, whose goals and characters are different. However, they are similar, in the way the verbal and body/movement communication occurs among the participants. Over the years, as a result of broad changes in clinical analytic theory and practice, in art, and shifts in perspective about the essence of therapy and its goals, shifts have occurred in body/movement-oriented supervision. The developmental changes that occurred in body-movement theory in DMT are reflected in supervision, based on the assumption that one cannot separate the way in which supervision is conducted and the way the therapy sessions, brought to supervision for discussion and processing, are conducted.

Adapting supervision to the changes that occurred in the DMT approach is crucial, since in most cases, the supervisors serve as role models with whom the supervisees identify, and the most important learning occurs through this identification process. Adapting supervision includes the changes that were discussed in the ‘three stages’, and implementing the active principles that they include as essential elements in supervision. Integrating them in the way supervision is conducted, and in the messages to the supervisees, allows the latter to internalize these ways of acting and responding, on the path to forming their professional identity (Young, 2012). Supervision is considered essential in order to learn to function effectively as a therapist. It serves as a place of professional training and of building a therapeutic identity (Watkins, 1997). It has been proven to improve the professional skills of the therapist (Fiedler, 2008; Jones & Dokter, 2008; Panhofer, 2008). One of these skills is the acquiring of professional language, which is a necessary skill; a shared language also provides a sense of belonging and security (Panhofer et al., 2011).

The main goal of the supervision process is to help the therapists build the skills necessary so that their patients receive beneficial therapy (Young, 2004). In the context of the supervision process, a space is created for thinking, reflection, and insight, in which the supervisors and supervisees create, together, a picture of the patient and a picture of the therapeutic relationship (Case, 2007). Supervision is a relationship that supports a different relationship, that of the therapist and client (Brown, Meyerowitk-Katz, & Ryde, 2007).

Payne (2008) suggested relating to supervision as necessarily allowing a safe space for exploration, so that the supervisee can examine difficult emotions such as anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty in an emotionally supportive environment. Mollon (2000) also writes that supervision should provide a space for contemplation, feeling, and mirroring. The supervision must be a place in which logic and emotion receive space to exist simultaneously, such that the supervisee is able to bring the clinical work in a conscious way. Consultation, advice, and learning are provided to the supervisee according to his need (Barnett, Goodyear, Cornish, and Lichtenberg, 2007).

There are many varied and creative methods of supervision in DMT, as well as in other modes of creative arts therapies (Ko, 2014). Mollon (1989) argues that supervision that focuses on art fosters professional and personal growth in the supervisee since the art fosters self-understanding, and its place in therapy. A significant position in the area of supervision in the creative arts therapies it that the most appropriate supervision for arts therapists uses the artistic medium used by the supervisee in his work (Durkin, Perach, Ramseyer, & Sontag, 1989; Marion & Felix, 1979; McNiff, 1986). Studies that examined the effect of using art in the supervision process showed how it improves self-awareness and the process of understanding counter-transference (Turry, 2001). Using art in the supervision space even reduces tension (Deaver & Shiflett, 2011); improves the relationship between supervisor and supervisee (Scheiby, 2001); increases self-awareness in the supervisee (Austin & Dvorkin, 2001); and increases empathic attunement (Cooper, 2001). The importance of using the body and its movement in therapy and supervision, as a way of understanding and knowing, has been mentioned by a number of dance movement therapists (Federman, 2011; Meekums, 2007; Panhofer et al., 2011; Payne, 2008).

Payne (2008) emphasized the contribution of using writing, moving, or visual art to gain new perspectives on the supervision material. Panhofer et al. (2011) even suggested a new method of self-supervision involving movement. Meekums (2007) uses the body as a central listener in DMT supervision, who is waiting to absorb information, bypassing the logical area of the brain and activating the body's wisdom. This embodied approach to supervision is similar to Authentic Movement, in the sense that it uses symbolic processing, and speaks to unknown places of body knowledge, and wisdom that may be accessed beyond the logical mind (Ko, 2014). While this approach has significant advantages (e.g. supervisee self-knowledge, accessing other perspectives on the therapy), the entire process is dependent on an appropriate relationship between the supervisor and the supervisee(s) (Ko, 2014).

Ko (2014) raised a difficulty encountered when using movement-based supervision. His study found that the movement serves to reduce the sense of authority in the supervision context and increase verbal sharing, thus creating a more intimate supervision space. While this is beneficial in many ways, it also appears to have the effect of confusing the supervision with the intimate space of therapy. This challenges the efficacy of the therapists’ training. It seems, therefore, that there is a need for more distance and objectivity in the supervision space.

In light of these insights, the author suggests that there is a need for a supervision model that combines the use of Authentic Movement with a model of movement analysis and observation. This need arises from fieldwork and from the professional literature. It is important to maintain the unique contribution of the embodied approach in DMT supervision, however movement analysis and observation would provide an appropriate amount of emotional distance from the supervision through the use of structured analytic language (Shahar-Levy, 2004). The ability to separate between the therapist’s world and the patient’s world facilitates greater attunement in the therapist for the patient, and enhances the ability to actualize empathy.

In the history of DMT, methods of movement observation and analysis have been used for precisely this purpose; they allow one to understand, classify, and interpret human movement (Davis & Markus, 2006; Levy, 2005). Used together, observation, analysis, and interpretation enhance the ability to provide therapeutic insight (Specktor, 2015). The methods outlined above (KMP, LMA, and Epimotorics’) are all used in this way in DMT. They have the potential to play a larger role in DMT supervision.

In embodied or arts-based supervision, there tends to be a use of personal language. I would like to suggest that adding methods of movement observation is an important step in the development of embodied supervision. It parallels the focus that these techniques receive in DMT theory and clinical practice, but it has yet to receive attention in the literature on DMT supervision. I believe it also addresses the confusion that may arise out of embodied supervision, which creates an intimate space that can invite confusion of the supervision space with therapy.

4. Conclusion

DMT integrates insights from nonverbal experience, from verbal discussion, and from cognitive observation analysis. These all have their place in comprising this complex profession, and contribute to a certain balance within the practice of DMT. This balance allows both for deep self-expression, rooted in the body and movement, and for the ability to understand this expression.

As in many other fields, supervision in DMT contributes greatly to the young therapist's development. DMT supervision can often provide the unique and moving experience of processing their work with clients through the experiential use of movement. This is a truly important part of the supervision. However, even these supervision models, which generally also include verbal discussion of the personal movement process, can be too close to therapy for some supervisees. They require guidance in creating space from their own personal, emotional reflection, in order to build therapeutic insight about their clients and the therapist-client relationship.

The structured analytic vocabulary of movement observation systems, while perhaps less intuitive and more demanding in certain ways, would provide order in the supervision context. This is precisely what it does in DMT theory and practice. It leads to more knowledge and information about the therapy, not only from the up-close experience of movement work, but from a cognitive processing of that same emotional-movement work.

The combination of embodied supervision with techniques for classifying and interpreting those experiences is an important step in the development of supervision in DMT. It may be relevant, as well, to other fields that employ embodied or experience-based methods in supervision. Perhaps they could also benefit from the use of techniques that provide objective professional language. Further research can establish and specify potential models of supervision that utilize movement analysis and observation.

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