1980s Popculture and Dance

In the 1980s, I was born and so was MTV. Movies and TV sitcoms were filled with dance and performance themes, like Fame, Kids Incorporated, and Star Search. Today's dance television includes So You Think You Can Dance?, Dancing With the Stars, America's Best Dance Crew, and the new Superstars of Dance.

One of the reasons I want to become a dance therapist, I think, is partly because of experiencing dance and movement as a tool to release emotion, express myself nonverbally, and to become more in tune with the world and myself, just like the characters in my favorite movies. Let's take a look at some of my favorite dance scenes in movies from the decade, shall we?

The Angry dance in Footloose,
The African Anteater Ritual dance in Can't Buy Me Love,
The Maniac dance in Flashdance.
The "nobody puts Baby in the corner" dance in Dirty Dancing,
The Dance TV contest in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,
The Saturday school dance in The Breakfast Club.

Obama's Inauguration Poem

With the contagious wave of change and renewed spirit in this country, I am posting the poem from Obama's Inauguration on 1.20.09, read by its author, Elizabeth Alexander, from C-Span's website.

Happy New President Day, everyone!

More articles on Dance/Movement Therapy!

Here's an article on dance therapy from Dance Magazine!

And a blog about everything dance therapy from a dance therapist here.

Interesting Reading for my Internship

“Accept what is in front of you without wanting the situation to be other than it is.”

This quote serves me as a sort of mantra during the somewhat uncomfortable and unfamiliar territory of working with hospitalized mentally ill patients, who are overwhelmingly medicated on major antidepressants and antipsychotics. But how do I do dance therapy with a heavily medicated patient, or a group of heavily medicated patients? Will the drugs prevent or slow any therapeutic progress in the expressive arts? Are the "numbed" patients able to feel deeply, able to express themselves artistically?

At the library yesterday, I picked up Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, (2008)by Charles Barber. Here is a quote from it:

"In our particularly American zeal for simple explanations, quick fixes, and overwhelming the enemy with technology, we've too quickly lost sight of the centrality of social and environmental factors. And despite undeniable progress in the pharmacological realm, the enduring truth is that the human factor, and the human approach, remains critical to healing."

For more interesting reading, here's a link to another article about the perceptions of the mentally ill, printed in the Utne Reader.

Appropriate Music

I've spent a large part of my morning looking at my itunes library for music used for dance therapy. Where I am interning, each day is completely different, with patients who may want fast, up beat music one day and slow, quiet music the next. Music is a major component to the therapeutic aspect of working with groups.

This afternoon, I just happened to read this FANTASTIC article from Canada's Walrus magazine on music's ability to elicit emotions: read it and weep.