Beyonce makes me want to...

Movement is expressive. In this case, this kid portrays all the emotions and movements that I want to express when I see this Beyonce video. Go kid, go!

Making Art in Healthcare: Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange

Excerpt from Stage Presence - Body Presence: Movement and Body Experience With the Elderly by Babette Becker, PhD, CSW, BCD

Liz Lerman, a dancer and choreographer, developed an intergenerational dance company by first training young dancers in her company, The Dance Exchange, to teach and dance with older adults.

Creativity is often arrested in the aged. It is imprisoned by inhibitions, habits, and expectations. When it is released we get a Grandma Moses creating vibrant paintings in the primitive style. If it is never inhibited, we get a Picasso creating until the week of his death. Creativity can be released in many ways.
...The experiences and emotions of older persons can be translated into vibrant, creative works. Usually, however, there must be a program and a setting that encourages and channels free expression into an art form.

Movements can be used to express emotion, re-create an event, tell a story, work out an idea, or simply create joy. Dance is an active expression of individuals' willingness to move, learn, and reveal themselves through their bodies as well as to learn, take directions, work harmoniously, share ideas, and rehearse--to grow as artists, both collectively and individually. As muscles get full play, they are likely to improve in their range of motion, stamina, and agility.

To teach dance to older adults, I rely heavily on the experience of dance itself than on the therapeutic growth of the individual. If each of us listens to our own individual beat, we can create themes and movements. All forms of creativity, emotional and physical expression, physical movement, intellectual agility, and body health together produce therapeutic growth for elderly persons as well as create vitality for rich and long lives.

Read more about Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange here.

Juliette Binoche: Actress, Artist, Dancer

"And I'd say that as I paint, I'm dancing on the paper, and as I'm dancing onstage, I'm drawing in the space."

Listen to Juliette Binoche on NPR's All Things Considered.

Michael Jackson Tribute at the MTV Video Music Awards

The MTV Video Music Awards opened last night with a tribute to Michael Jackson.

What was their tribute, you might ask?

The dances from his videos. Enough said.

MTV Shows

Click here for my previous blog post about his death.

Frustrations and Joys and Entering my 29th Year

I have just entered the last year of my twenties with a whole lot of turmoil and excitement.

I received an email this week regarding the updated requirements of becoming a registered dance/movement therapist, which will be integrated into a new handbook compiled by the American Dance Therapy Association's (ADTA) Credential Committee (which is also transitioning to the official title of DMT Certification Board).

In the new handbook, new guidelines have been established, specifically:

...prior to starting the DMT internship, 9 credits of general training coursework, (abnormal psychology, psychopathology, developmental psychology, and group process)in addition to 18 credits of dance/movement therapy coursework must be completed.

I have approximately 450 internship hours completed at this time. And 3 credits of DMT coursework.

OH NO!!!!!!!!

And this is the main reason why I blog: to let other budding alternate route students aware of what is necessary to become a dance therapist ahead of time, making their alternate route experience, well, a little less bumpy and without these OH NO's.

So I do not know if all my internship hours will count. There is a fear that none will, or maybe only 200 hours will be accredited towards the fieldwork supervision hours necessary in addition to the 700 unpaid internship hours I've been chipping away on all year.

I don't mean to gripe about this experience, either. Trust me, this past year I have had to do A LOT of outside reading, writing, and planning with my supervisor to further understand the breadth and depth of working as a dance therapist in a psychiatric hospital. I've been getting cozy with the DSM-IV, and have been trying on my 'clinical hat' for writing notes. I've scientifically been doing trial and error kinds of experiments with patients and groups to see what happens, (like if the patients are responsive or not to something in particular) and I know for a fact that all of this would be much easier and smoother if I had all of the DMT coursework completed prior to beginning my internship.

Thus, I await further communication with the DMT Certification Board with an open heart and a positive mind. All these experiences in the past year have made a tremendous impact on my life and who I am as a dance/movement therapy graduate student. I would not give back this internship experience for anything.

And then later this week, as I turned 29 years old, I received a message from my three year old niece, saying:

If Auntie Blair is sweaty, I will fix her. I will put a tree and a glass of milk on her and I will wash away all of her eyes. Then I will knock over her milk and laugh about it, then I will sail back home.

So I dance with these nourishing images of milk and trees, dancing their growth potentials until I become sweaty with big eyes, and take a deep inhale. I remember why I decided to go alternate route and stay in California in the first place, opting out of a dance therapy graduate school experience in New York, a decision I made on the day my niece was born. And I exhale, and smile.

And then I got word that SB788 - the bill for professional licensure of clinical counselors in California has passed BOTH THE STATE ASSEMBLY AND THE STATE SENATE.

All that is left is for our Governor to sign it into law!

California Dance/Movement Therapists will indeed be considered licensed clinical counselors after years of being the ONLY state in this country that did not recognize dance therapy as a licensed profession.

This. is. great. news.

And it calls for a celebratory dance. I hope our Governator will sign the bill into law with a dancing heart, because according to this short article, Arnold says "Dancing is not my specialty." Let's hope his pen won't reflect those feelings for this momentus and historical moment for dance/movement therapists in California.

Manu Chao Records his Latest Album in a Psychiatric Hospital with the Mentally Ill

I love Manu Chao.

If you've never heard of him, definitely check out his music. There's even a free download of his latest endeavor of creating music with psychiatric patients in Buenos Aires at www.VivaLaColifata.org .

Read more about it from the Guardian UK's article, and go listen to some good Manu Chao.

Adios!