An Introduction to Dance Therapy

Dance Therapy is a form of Creative Arts Therapy, such as Art, Psychodrama and Music Therapy. According to the American Dance Therapy Association (A.D.T.A.), Dance/Movement Therapy is "the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional, social, cognitive and physical integration of the individual."[1]

Dance/Movement Therapy emerged as a distinct profession in the 1940s with the work of pioneers such as: Marian Chance, Mary Whitehouse, Franziska Boas and Liljan Espenaki. Today there are over twenty universities and institutions in the United States and abroad offering post-graduate academic programs in Dance Therapy. Presently, the A.D.T.A. is represented in forty-eight states of the U.S. and in twenty-four countries. In the academic, psychological and medical research fields, Dance Therapy is currently accepted and valued as an effective treatment for people with developmental, medical, social, physical and psychological impairments. Dance/Movement Therapy (D.M.T.) is practiced in educational, medical and mental health rehabilitation settings, nursing homes, day cares and in health promotion programs, as well as in private D.M.T. clinics and studios, with patients raging from normal, to neurotic, to psychotic. D.M.T. is implemented in individual, couple, family and group therapy formats.