History of Dance Therapy

Dance therapy, also known as dance movement therapy or DMT, is a practice of alternative psychotherapy that aims to heal a variety of different emotional and behavioral issues through dance and movement. The aim of the therapy is to ameliorate the patient's psychological state by strengthening the connection between body and mind that accounts for a greater balance through the person as a whole.

Carl Jung

• Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was one of the pioneers of movement therapy that eventually would evolve to become what is now referred to as dance movement therapy. His "Active Imagination" techniques were adapted from the precepts of Jungian analysis and became known as "Authentic Movement." Authentic Movement then became a recognized extension of dance therapy. Mary Stark Whitehouse was the dancer responsible for adapting the Jungian principles to dance therapy and went on to work not only with dancers but non-dancers as well because of the successful effects of the therapy.

Dancers

• Tracing the history of dance therapy includes not only psychologists and psychiatrists, but dancers themselves. The first and second generations of modern dancers includes Isadora Duncan, Dorothy Humphrey, Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Marian Chace, Trudi Schoop and Whitehouse. All of these dancers considered the movement and rhythm inherent in dance could both express and produce profound emotions. The conjoining of the study of psychiatry and the emotions became dance movement therapy.

Marian Chance and Trudi Shoop

• Chace and Shoop were most specifically associated with the birth of the dance therapy movement. Chace, who as a dance teacher encouraged expression over techniques, was invited to work with a group of psychologists and their patients in 1942. Self-taught Swiss dancer, Shoop dedicated her energies towards using dance and movement techniques towards dealing with the symptoms of patients who suffered from schizophrenia. She went on to provide her dance therapy at the Camarillo State Mental Hospital in conjunction with the treatment center's neuropsychiatric specialists.

Great Britain

• Great Britain must also be noted in the evolution of dance therapy. While its roots and participants aren't as clearly defined as those in the United States, a derivative of dance therapy was used in the country's state schools in conjunction with dance-based education. Unfortunately, due to the lack of detail in recording dance therapy's British origins, it's principles, practices and the people instrumental in its development aren't given equal recognition as their U.S. counterparts.

Official Recognition

• According to the America Dance Therapy Association, official recognition by various organizations of the U.S. Government has given credence to dance therapy's practices and procedures. This includes, but is not limited to, being awarded a grant by the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health to explore "dance/movement therapy for those with medical illnesses" and being recognized by the Health Care Financing Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services as a "covered element of a partial hospitalization program in Medicare facilities."