International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) Convention

The IEATA convention is this week in Cambridge, MA. I am not able to go, but am looking forward to attending (and co-presenting!) at the American Dance Therapy Association Conference this October in Portland.

Dance therapist, Donna Newman-Bluestein, is attending and presenting at IEATA's conference and has a blog posting about it you can read here. Sounds lovely!

Zen and the Art of Expression

When times are bad, like in this recession, we evolutionary beings tend to seek for ways to feel better by expressing ourselves and searching for meaning, understanding, and connection. We search for ways to feel human and alive, to console ourselves and trust that the world is a good place and that things will get better.

There's a zen saying that the purpose of life is "to express the ineffable, which is the ultimate paradox."

Expressing the ineffable is the language of art. And these days, performance art is used as self expression, healing, and to establish community. And it seems to be everywhere.

Many times in an improvisational way, performance artists plan (somewhat) to gather a large number of people to perform a certain an art, like doing a choreographed dance in a train station, for example, or causing a scene of some kind in an urban setting, like in the popular NYC group, Improv Everywhere's video, Human Mirror:



Some performance artists nonverbally make a statement, like in this video, also by the same group:



Performance art, which is a nonverbal display of art, integrates a lot of movement or dance as its medium. The human body is the canvas, and the situation and/or costume or clothing its paint.

It expresses the ineffable in a world full of paradox. Its a in-your-face-art, one in which passers by do not need a ticket and is usually documented or videotaped for the world to enjoy with the click of a button.

I'm planning one I hope to perform in before 2010, and I'll definitely be videotaping to share with the world.

Stay tuned.

What is JCAHO?

"The state is here!" cried a doctor from her car as she pulled into the parking lot. My supervisor, walking with me into the hospital, stopped abruptly and slowly covered her hand over her mouth.
"You can't be here" She said as she looked at me.

Of course, I had a heads up for a few weeks, knowing that Jchao (pronounced "JAYCO"), whoever that was, was going to make a surprise visit to review the hospital, and all interns (that's me) were to be sent home. It made sense, I am technically a "volunteer" since I opted not to do my dance therapy internship through my graduate school, but rather for the hours and experience towards my hopeful dance therapy registration in the future, and I don't have formal training. Yet.

So I Googled "Jayco" when I got home and found this blog post, written by the CEO of a Boston hospital, stating why Jcaho, The Joint Commission, is important and necessary. Here is Jcaho's website on hospital standards, and Wikipedia's explanation of who they are and why they're so important for our health and wellbeing.

Good luck, hospital!

Why I love Surfing

1. Movement.

Not a big surprise from a future dance / movement therapist, right?! The movement of the waves, the movement of paddling and pushing my body up on the board to stand, and the process of letting the ocean's energy move me through the water is like nothing else. It's a dance on water and an improvisational act. Each day the conditions are different, each wave is different, and each surf spot is different. I never know if the water will be crowded, what sea life and creatures will show up (or how they will behave), what the exact water temperature will be, or if I'll be able to catch a wave at all.

2. Ocean/Water.

My mother would take my sister and me to the beach when we were fighting a lot as children, saying in recent years that it was to "chill us out." It worked. And still does. Like a mother rocking her baby to sleep, the lapping of waves on the shore is a tranquil sound, and calm waves can create a rocking and holding quality of movement that is nourishing to my body and my mind. I still go to the ocean to clear my head, and I always feel better.
Water is healing. There's nothing revolutionary about that, the ancient Romans knew to take baths to cleanse, and Scandinavians still partake in dipping their bodies in freezing cold water temperatures after sweating profusely in saunas. Of course, we can't forget about Turkish baths or the cleansing rituals of the Japanese or Mikvot in Jewish culture.

3. Confronting the Unknown.

Waves can be very big and very scary. Many people die in the ocean. Many times while paddling out, I feel my body being aggressively pushed and pulled in a way that is totally out of my physical control. When the bigger sets come through, I find myself duck diving or pushing through the white water (for the smaller waves), hoping to not get rocked or too pummeled. I like to be in control in dark, cold, and wild waters. But I also love the feeling of confidence and joy I get when I confront these unknown conditions and fears. These are rare occasions when I am actually proud of myself.

4. Connecting to Nature.

Fresh air and exercise are a great combination, and to get both of while in the ocean is pure delight. Sunshine doesn't hurt, either. To quote a friend,

"There is something so tranquil and revitalizing about being in a body of water that connects all across the world…"

And it's no wonder that I find surfing, like dance, therapeutic. Like dance and movement on the earth and land, it's improvisational, healing, nourishing, and connecting. Growing up near the ocean, I've seen how surfers can become happily addicted to surfing in the ocean, their calm demeanors shining like a halo around their heads.

Since I am interested in alternative therapies, I did a little research and found:

The Jimmy Miller Foundation in Southern California uses Ocean Therapy to work with mentally ill children, and the Paskowitz family's Surfers Healing teaches children with Autism to surf.

The Most Talented Chroeographer EVER...

...is Wayne McGregor.

I had the opportunity to intern for McGregor's dance company, Random, while I was studying abroad in London during college. I was living a dancer's dream there, commuting by Tube to Sadler's Wells Theatre by day, where Random is the resident company, and taking classes by night at Pineapple Dance Studio in the quaint Covent Garden. I was amazed with McGregor's talent then, and continue to be consumed with wonderment with every project he takes part in, which most recently was for the opening ceremonies of the World Swimming Championships in Rome:



McGregor's style, one that I believe competes to being the most unique and artistic of our time, is to use dance as a way embrace, question, and challenge aspects of being human. This perspective on dance as an organic art form along with a voluminous confidence (in personality and in the work) is one of the most appealing aspects, to me, about McGregor's work. I can't get enough of this guy. I want to drink him in, in ridiculous hope that some residue of his gold (which everything he puts his mind to turns into) will pool up in my gut, constructing a temple of genius there, so that I may become an enlightened (or golden), McGregorite. One blogger describes seeing his work for the first time in Proprius, a dance including London school kids age 8-14:

Wayne’s movement style is very familiar to me – a way of doing trust falls, of lifting and carrying other dancers, of turning people using your heels, of balancing in a way that’s just not quite standard in modern dance – a way I find far more intimate and involved than most modern dance, and certainly ballet – that totally says, “This is something Wayne McGregor created.” It’s a language that is as clearly itself as Chinese or Japanese – I would never mistake it for Korean just because it was in a different context. And it’s difficult, and it’s, I think, not something people wrap their heads around easily – it doesn’t really have a basis in the “language of dance” that people outside of modern dance aficionados have in their heads (think of ballroom dancing or club dancing or even how people dance in musicals – it’s not modern dance at all).

I agree that his work is a recognizable language, and would argue that it is modern dance, possibly postmodern. A world in which movement is art and life informs the dance.

Years ago when I was the intern, I remember much of McGregor's choreography was influenced and inspired by computer software programs that bend the body, on screen, in impossible and unthinkable ways. McGregor's recipe for choreography also adds quality dancers with strong, very thin and flexible bodies, music and sounds by Scanner, and a splash of artistic lighting. The result is genius.