I often hear this objection, when I talk about dance-therapy : "I don't know to dance. If they ask me to dance, I don't know what to do with my body ". The practice of dancing being linked traditionally to the performance and control of complex movements and physically intense, it is considered elitist and inaccessible. Dance therapy's mission is to shatter these preconceptions. 

Dance-therapy, it is for everyone

It postulates that the dance is for everyone and that each person has the opportunity to express themselves, to soothe and heal by the use of movements and rhythms universal. The major challenge of the dance-therapist is to share the vocabulary of the body, to open the pupil to self-awareness and the expressive potential of his body. By mastering the language of his body, it acquires the ability to symbolize the movement with an intention, and it increases its potential for expression and healing. 

My positioning of dance-therapist

To be a professor of dance therapy, it is therefore first to open the doors of the imagination of its audience. The professor, the time of an hour and a half, pushing the boundaries of real and created for its students a space where anything is possible.

It is then remind students of the whole range of the natural language of their body. The professor teaches the students to sharpen their proprioception and awareness of every part of their body, from the tip of the toes up to the root of the hair. It helps students to take ownership of this fabulous tool of expression that is their body.

It is also help to enhance the symbolic language of the body in dance. Professor of dance therapy serves as a guide to translate the interiority of the student in a correct movement. It relies in particular on the different qualities of movement : fluid and jerky, slow and fast movements towards the ground and moves towards the sky... 

Finally, it is to provide students with elements of symbolic language, making the connection between thought, emotion and movement incarnate. What could be more beautiful and more powerful, to talk about the expression burning anger, to dance with his body, the movement of the mighty flames of a brazier ? 

Extract of the memory The power of the symbolic dance-therapy Viviane Salaun, suitable for the blog

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