[Adta] response to student's research inquiry about dmt

[Christine Hopkins]

Hi Elysse--

Thank you for your questions about dance/movement therapy with the elderly and other types of patients.  Here are my thoughts:

There is no such thing as "a normal session" in dance therapy.  All sessions are custom-tailored to the people in that session on that day.  Dance therapy sessions with different kinds of diagnoses, problems or needs look very different from each other.  Even sessions with the same people from one week to the next could look very different depending on energy levels, current issues, techniques the dance therapist chooses to use and so on.

Dance therapy sessions are not classes.  While participants learn things from their experiences in dance therapy sessions, a therapy session is not a class, a teacher's leadership role is different from a therapist's leadership role.  More specifically, a dance class is quite different from a dance therapy session.  The goals or objectives are different, the methods and structure of the group experience are different, the leader's training and background are different.  Even though both types of groups are based on dance and movement, there are major differences between dance classes and dance therapy sessions.

Whether dance therapy sessions include people who have similar or the same diagnosis or problems or needs--or--include a variety of kinds of participants, depends on the setting.  For example, when I work in a geriatric psychiatric unit in a hospital, all the patients are elderly and all need psychiatric hospitalization, yet they have a variety of diagnoses, such as depression, psychosis, behavioral disorders.  Another example is a large psychiatric hospital that has separate units and programs for each kind of diagnosis.  All the schizophrenic patients are in one unit.  All the depressed and bipolar patients are in another unit.  Or patients are grouped by age, all the kids or all the adolescents have their own units in the hospital but each age group has a variety of diagnoses.  So the group membership in dance therapy sessions depends a lot on the setting or location of the sessions.  

As to your specific question about dance therapy sessions with the elderly, based on my experience doing these, I can tell you that they generally include more laughter, more joy, faster music and more social dancing style of movement interaction than dance therapy groups with other kinds of patients (speaking only from my own experience).  

Yet we cannot generalize by age of the patient only.  In my sessions with elderly people with Alzheimer's disease, the movement differences in my own body as a dance therapist working with the elderly include things like:  I curve my torso forward and bend my knees way down to shrink my body size to be more on the same level with very petite elderly ladies, for example.  I use large, sweeping arm gestures to stimulate movement responses with the elderly.  (I would never use such expansive and stimulating movements with psychotic patients of any age, for example.)  I use a lot of what I call "proximity behaviors" in my work with dementia patients.  Getting very close to them, face-to-face eye contact and smiling, holding hands, hugs, patting on the knee and so forth.  These kinds of therapeutic movement interventions and techniques would be dangerous, nonproductive or countertherapeutic with other kinds of patients.  And with some elderly patients, those who are agitated or anxious, I use different techniques than these.  So you see, it is very individualized.

I hope this answers your questions and gives you some images in your mind's eye to consider what dance therapy sessions look like.  Sometimes considering the overall unifying principles of how dance therapy works is an easier question to explore than the wide variety of how dance therapy sessions look!  You may want to look at the Student Information page on the ADTA website, if you haven't seen it yet.  It has some suggestions for doing school projects on dmt.

Good luck on your research project and thank you for contacting the American Dance Therapy Association listserv community!

Christine Hopkins



Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:43:52 -0700
From: "Elysse Dumont" <nomusicnolife021 at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Adta] need information please
To: adta at adta.org
Message-ID: <BAY138-F19E9507C35746516785DA49B680 at phx.gbl>
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Hi I'm doing a research project on dance therapy and i had a few questions 
that didnt get answered while on your website.

Well the first question is about dance therapy with the elderly. Are the 
sessions with elderly different than a normal session? Are there any 
variations in movements, does the instructor need to move any slower etc.? 
Are the classes split up by what you taking the class for? For example do 
all the autistic participants take a class or does everyone with a chronic 
illness take a class together or is everyone just mixed together?
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