Another exercise to help a group experience a good beginning is hand dialogue. In this exercise, two individuals are partners. They are seated and then instructed to improvise dances with their hands, with one person ini tially leading and the other following. They put their hands together and may choose to keep their eyes open, but they are encouraged to close their eyes to get the full impact of this nonverbal experience. Participants may use their fingers, palms, or both in doing their dance. Likewise, they may use the front or back of their hands. After dancing with their hands for 60 to 90 seconds in one position, they are instructed to switch positions, with the leader becoming the follower. Talking is reserved for after the dance has finished. Time is set aside for discussions between pairs, and then the group as a whole talks about feelings and emotions associated with what they have been through and how such affect is expressed nonverbally.
A similar type of movement dance that comes at the start of many groups, but can be implemented during the working stage of the group as well, is shadows. This exercise involves one person imitating another in a follow-the-leader style. Sometimes it is done in silence, but it is not unusual to involve music. The type of music chosen can help encourage interaction and break down inhibitions. After the exercise, participants talk about their experience in groups of two, four, and eight and then in the group as a whole. Again, this type of movement opens individuals up to greater awareness and gives them a common experience as a basis for sharing.
Families
The complex way in which individuals in families relate to one another is often referred to as the family dance. In healthy families, “the partners do not need to hold on tightly . . . because they know they are . . . moving to the same rhythm” (Lindbergh, 1955/1975, p. 104). In dysfunctional families, however, members cling closely to one another and hesitate to let their members change, much less leave home. Thus, the results of family dances are either positive or negative. Healthy families move to resolve common problems and move toward a final completing of themselves as a functional, working unit. Unhealthy families take steps to hinder the growth of persons within the family unit by keeping them developmentally delayed and stuck in nonproductive patterns.
Three family dance and movement exercises can assist families in distress. One is family choreography, which involves the whole family in a physical and mental experience. The other two, enactment and paradox, are more artistic ways to help families move in harmony.
Creative Reflection
What was the family dance like in your family of origin? What patterns kept repeating themselves?
In family choreography, different members of the family stage a moment in time in the family’s life. Then specific movements are given to each player and repeated until members of the family get a feel for the multiple interconnectedness of their lives. This approach is well illustrated in the work of Papp (1982), in which married couples were assisted in acting out their patterns of behavior in this manner. The exercise resulted in a change in the couples’ present actions and a potential metaphorical memory trace of what movements could be positive in the marriage.
In enactment, the counselor directs the family members to do a dance movement representing what they are stuck in, such as an inability to resolve arguments, and to show what happens during each step. This type of direction takes the involuntary nature away from the action in which the family members are stuck and places it in the hands of the counselor. Therefore, even if the family members do not resolve their disputes, their relationships with one another change. They have to try another (more positive) way of settling their disputes because of the power they have given the counselor to direct their old, nonproductive patterns.
In paradox, a type of reverse enactment takes place. The counselor basically tells the family they cannot do something, such as change, or the counselor instructs the family to go slow. The result is that the family either obeys and moves differently under the counselor’s direction or rebels and changes to resist the counselor’s instructions. Change in patterns and movement within the family is the end product.
Dance and Movement in Counseling With Other Creative Arts
Dance and movement in counseling can use techniques from other disciplines such as yoga (breathing techniques and different postures), classical ballet (an emphasis on verticality), and even other partner dances such as tango, paso doble, and swing (with their focus on rhythmic synchrony) to connect people with their bodies, to anchor them physically to the ground, and to relate them to others (de Tord & Bräuninger, 2015). Dance and movement have many elements in common with other creative arts. Fisher (1989) noted, “Shape, space, time, and force are used by dancers, artists, and musicians alike” (p. 51). On a specific level, dance is usually associated with the creative art form of music. After all, music provides a rhythmic background that can heavily influence the types of dance people engage in and the frequency with which they do so. Other art forms that have an influence on dance and movement are drama and art.
Dance and Movement and Music
In many cultures the root word for music and dance are the same. It would be inconceivable for people in some parts of the world to remain motionless while music is played, or to move together rhythmically except with the support of music. (Chace, 1967, p. 25)
In the United States, the natural connectedness between dance and music is exemplified in society in a number of ways, including in the following two sentences of a newspaper story about a college basketball team preparing to play in the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament: “Some call the NCAA Tournament the ‘big dance,’ others the ‘grand ball.’ In either case, Wake Forest is ready to face the music” (D. Collins, 1991, p. C1).
Regardless of how it is portrayed, the linkage of music with movement occurs frequently when dance and movement are accompanied by rhythm and sound. One example is Project TOUCH, an intergenerational program between kindergarten children and residents of a geriatric facility (Mason-Luckey & Sandel, 1985). In this situation, the children and their older partners sing certain songs and move accordingly. For example, in expressing feelings about fantasy and hope, the group sings the Texas folk song “Bluebird Through My Window” while standing in a circle holding hands. As the song is sung, a person designated as the bluebird flies through the spaces (frames) made by the arms and finally lands in the circle and designates another person to become the bluebird.
Another example of music and dance pairing up is in the use of both to help homeless children learn problem-solving strategies (Straum, 1993). Although the combination did not produce significant results compared to more verbal methods, it did foster good participation and helped children to stay on task.
Creative Reflection
Have you ever thought of drama as movement or dance? What are your impressions now of drama as a part of movement or dance?
Dance and Movement and Drama
Dramatic activities that can be used as adjuncts to dance therapy have been outlined by D. R. Johnson and Eicher (1990). According to these practitioners, dramatic techniques are effective with adolescents in dance therapy because they mediate the threat of intimacy members of this population feel. Basically, the techniques work internally “by decreasing the ambiguity of emotional and feeling states” and externally “by providing a safer container for the aggressive drives stimulated by the intimate environment”
