NYSADTA Newsletter

Letter from the Student Representative

Hello D/MT Community,

This is Michelle Goldsmith. I am the Pratt student representative of the Student Membership Committee. I am writing to say hello to the D/MT community and remind everyone why this committee exists and what students and prospective students can reach out to us for.

This committee is here to find out what kind of support students need from the ADTA. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us. You can contact me and/or I can put you in touch with a student representative in your area. We also wanted to open up a dialogue for students to share their thoughts about what they need from the ADTA and for ADTA members to share ways that they would be willing to offer support.

Recently, our committee had a lovely meeting via teleconference. We discussed the wealth of information and resources available in ADTA members who can be possible contacts for thesis writing. We began brainstorming for student membership drives and discussed the value of being a member of the ADTA as a student. Thanks so much to my fellow committee members for your awesome ideas, inspiration, and dedication. This was my first meeting on the committee and I hung up the phone feeling so excited and inspired.

Community and inspiration are just a couple of the ways that the ADTA can be supportive to students. Please be in touch!!

My very best,

Michelle Goldsmith, Pratt Student Representative

Upcoming Events

The NYSADTA Proudly Presents: Body Metaphor and Viscero-Somatic Connections
Saturday, September 26, 1 - 4 pm

Barry R. Komisaruk, Ph.D. BS, Biology, CUNY, 1961; PhD, Psychobiology, Rutgers, 1965; NIH postdoc, Neuroendocrinology, UCLA; Rutgers faculty, 1966-present. Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor; Professor II, Psychology; Associate Dean, Graduate School; Adjunct Professor, Radiology, UMDNJ. A Program Director, NIGMS-NIH, 2001-2004. Grants: $7+M: NIH, NSF, Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, NJ Commission Spinal Cord Research. Research: Brain activity during sexual response in women. Review panels: NSF, NIH; editorial board Journal of Sexual Medicine, Chairman, Rutgers IRB. Mentored 22 PhDs, 14 postdocs; Publications: 145+ research papers, 150+ conference abstracts, 4 books including "The Science of Orgasm," Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, second printing, translated to Spanish and Chinese, received Bullough Award "most distinguished book written for the professional sexological community, 2006." New book, "The Orgasm Answer Guide", same publisher, is now in press for publication in November, 2009.

By observing stilted body movement or posture and asking persons to exaggerate the movement or posture, we have observed previously suppressed feelings and behavior to be expressed suddenly and dramatically, surprising the do-er and the observers. Visceral activity changes (e.g. in the circulatory system) may accompany such behavioral expression. There is an intimate connection between visceral and somatic systems, exemplified in referred pain, somatic-visceral reflexes (e.g. erection/ejaculation), and visceral-somatic reflexes (e.g. abdominal muscle tension during childbirth). The visceral-somatic connection may be expressed in "psychosomatic" disease, e.g., Reynaud’s disease. I will discuss various aspects of the interplay among visceral-somatic interaction, "psychosomatic" disease, and the concept of body metaphor, in healthy and pathological contexts.

Where: 44 East 32nd Street, 11th Floor (Park/Madison)
Fee: $10 members; $15 non-nembers; by donation
To RSVP: e-mail Frankdance@gmail.com by Wed. Sept. 23.


A Six Week Movement, Art, And Poetry Workshop: Exploring The Heart Of Meaning
Sundays, 5-7pm, September 13, 20, 27; October 4, 18, 25

Barbara Chutroo, DTR, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Dance/Movement Therapist, and Certified Focusing Trainer. She has explored various forms of movement and dance both as art and as healing practices. Her paper, Meet Your Body can be found on the Focusing website along with a conversation with her.

The body gives meaning to many basic concepts, emotions, and mental states. In this workshop, we will explore this interplay of movement and meaning. We will include art and poetry to enrich our explorations. Selecting elements from our physical bodies, history, myth, and the world around us, we will ask our living breathing presence to find a resonance with these concepts and discover their felt meaning.

Each week we will invite a new theme:

• Week 1 - The elements of the body from conception to birth
• Week 2 - The physical body - from bones to breath
• Week 3 - The animal kingdom
• Week 4 - The natural world - fire, water, earth, air, wood, and stars
• Week 5 - Archetypes and myths
• Week 6 - Emotions, transitions, and endings.

Dance/Movement Therapy as Radical Approach to Community Building
by Tomoyo Kawano, MA, LCAT, ADTR

How can the dance/movement therapy community better serve the community at large? This summer I was able to make headway on how to answer this question. I performed at the Hiroshima Memorial at the Peace Park in New Paltz, NY., which, in of itself, is not an unusual thing to do. What was eye-opening was that through an improvisational dance, I unknowingly took part in the creation of something much greater than what I could fathom on my own: building community. The beauty of it was that it happened in the process of doing what we all do as dance/movement therapists, which is to create with what is given in the moment.

When I facilitate dance/movement therapy sessions on the inpatient psychiatric unit where I work, I can expect that I will not know what will happen. There is always an element of uncertainty, and for me, feelings of both anxiety and excitement that come with this. As my supervisor, Joan Ingalls, said that for her, anxiety is about the ego. She thinks the process of losing her ego is the most thrilling thing when she does therapy. I relate to this in that I have to relinquish control, lose myself in the moment and ride the waves as they come. That I do this daily, five times a week does not diminish my anxiety. For me, it resembles meditation or many spiritual practices such as aikido and sado (Japanese tea ceremony) in which the goal is to be present and give attention to what is offered in the moment. The reward can be exhilarating. When it is over, I am usually left with a profound satisfaction of having created something with others. And this is exactly what happened through this dance I performed at the memorial event this past August.

For the past five years, I've danced every August at the Hiroshima Memorial in New Paltz on the anniversary of the atomic bombing. Aside from the obvious reason of aligning with the non-profit organization, Arts for Peace's message to promote peace through the arts, I wanted to dance because Julie Wegener, the director of Arts for Peace, invited me to perform. My initial motivation was personal. When Julie requested that I dance in the memorial I saw it as an opportunity to get closer to her. As director of Arts for Peace, I knew that this memorial was important for Julie, so doing this with her seemed particularly fitting for our relationship. What was unexpected was how my personal and professional growth seemed to be reflected in the yearly performances. I now see that when dance is performed utilizing the skills we have as dance/movement therapists, it can impact and build community. There was a five-year progression for this to evolve, and the idea of community building through dance/movement therapy was only revealed to me this year.

In the first year, my ideas on what a dance for a memorial should look like dictated how I involved myself with the event. I was not concerned about what to do relationally with anyone except for the other dancer I was performing with. I planned my performance: I chose the music, the movement repertoire, costumes and dancers. I saw myself as dancer and the dance as performance separate from the audience.

The focus remained similar the following year. My desire was to get in touch with my emotional history and to express this authentically. I chose a traditional Japanese piece of music while ruminating on the idea of suffering. Because I was focused inward, I went about creating the dance by imagining the dark depths of the collective psyche rather than finding out more about who these people were that come to this memorial year after year.

In the third year, I made a shift. I'd begun participating in social therapy groups where I was learning to create environments where people can develop. I was recognizing that I kept myself distant from others by holding on to the idea of who I thought I was rather than who I can be. I was getting more comfortable joining others in their activities creating something together. Because of this, I asked David Levy, another Arts for Peace member, to collaborate with me. We rehearsed briefly, going over poems we like and the general feel of the music David might play on his wooden flute. He improvised beautifully, but this was still a ready made performance. Still, it was far more intimate and open to connecting with the community. I saw this in the way the community responded: with visible emotionality having been moved by what we did.

Last year, I had planned on doing an improvisational piece to a song with anti- war lyrics. But at the last minute, something totally different was called for: a dance/movement therapy session. After picking me up at the Poughkeepsie train station, Julie and I were stuck in traffic due to an accident and could not cross the bridge to get to the Memorial. By the time we arrived  people were waiting for me to dance and then for Julie to make a closing statement afterwards .The memorial service was about to end. Not knowing what else to do, I asked everybody to stand in a circle. Still panting from rushing in the heat, I initiated a movement sequence because I needed to breathe and stretch from sitting in traffic for two hours.Incidentally, others were also stiff from sitting in uncomfortable positions on the grass. I picked up on how people were moving and mirrored these while directing others to do the same. I then asked volunteers to come up with movements that went along with what they were feeling or thinking about being there that day. The group of about twenty-five people then did each movement together. It was a silent memorial dance created by the community. At the end, they commented on how it felt like something was missing until this experience. "Now the memorial feels complete."

This year having taken in the impact of the dance/movement therapy session the previous year and further understanding how that connected me to the people at the service, I was thinking about my relationship to the guests of the Hiroshima Memorial and members of Arts for Peace. Who are they? Why do they come to this every year? When the remembrance first started over ten years ago, there were artists who came with the agenda of promoting their art. This was not the case with those who remained. Why do the people who keep coming, keep coming?

David and I decided to perform together again, but this time without any plan. Thirty minutes prior to the memorial I asked him, "Do you know what you will play?" "No," he responded quietly. "Do you know how you will move?" he asked, to which I replied, "No." He then told me a story about an autistic child who became the CEO of a new mode of treatment program for children diagnosed with Autism. "His parents were in the bathroom with him for hours doing all the movements he was doing, just kind of mimicking him, and he grew up to be just fine." This, despite all the doctors telling the child's parents that he would never be like a normal child. I yelled out enthusiastically: "This is what dance/movement therapy does!" We join in the dance or movement and go from there.

This conversation founded the basis for our performance that evening. After the invocation, singing and poetry readings, it was our turn. I stepped out into the space and began by exploring the ground, which had a slight incline. The lawn was damp and the wet blades of grass tickled my feet. A slight breeze stirred through the trees. During this warm-up phase, I was focusing my attention on David and awaiting for the music to sound. Listening deeply, I first let the music, and then the emotions carry me. My friend and partner who was sitting in the audience later described the progression as "Something that started off spiritual (probably from listening intently to the sound of the flute) that became emotional (when something totally different emerged from the various elements present)."

To my astonishment, the feedback was great. One guest came up to me in tears saying how much she was moved. Another member said she was usually not a fan of dance, but this was different. Two women, one Japanese and another American, wanted to tell me their interpretations of the "story," even though I didn't have one to begin with. A second Japanese woman commended me on the grueling rehearsals I must have endured daily with David to reach such high level of technical expertise and emotional expression. Someone else said that this kind of dance was exactly what was needed. Julie was grateful beyond words. What did this all mean?

This was not about me or my dance, but about the community. These people were completing the activity of building community by giving feedback. One young woman asked me if she could take dance lessons with me so she could learn how to express herself like I did. It was ironic that I was not expressing my self, but responding to what was being given. It was a collaborative process between me as artist/dancer improvising with what was in the milieu or environment. I was there during the invocation, singing, the musical performance, poetry reading, applause, and even silence; and by being impacted by all of this and more, was able to create the communal activity of completing the experience of this event and beyond.

As dance/movement therapists, we are experts on listening and paying attention to what is in the milieu or the environment. We are skilled at assessing the emotionality of people and can give immediate reflection both verbally and non-verbally. It is an organic process we cultivate through our profession. When we are engaged in the daily practice of working with uncertainty and creative potential of being present, the outcome of what is created can seem like something magical. Social therapy has heightened my understanding of this and thus of dance/movement therapy as a community building activity.

Al, a photographer, and long time friend of mine, commented that this year's dance matched in emotional depth, the dance we'd seen together at the first Hiroshima Memorial service by Arts for Peace ten years ago. When it was over, we saw that both of us had tears streaming down our faces. That history we had together was still alive in our relationship today and we were still building on it. As purveyors of dance/movement therapy we can build community by simply taking what we do at our work place outside the general context of various establishments or private practice. It is a slow but radical movement that can humanize our world.