DANCE PROGRAM

Dance/Movement Therapy
Study Support Group

Once a month on Sunday afternoons, September through May, a group of people who enjoy moving and are interested in dance/movement therapy, come together at Mather Dance Center, CWRU. The group is an outgrowth of the many dance/movement therapy workshops and courses offered since 1972 by DanceCleveland (formerly known as the Cleveland Modern Dance
Association) in association with colleges, universities and other organizations,

DanceCleveland and the Cleveland State University Dance Department sponsored a dance/movement therapy workshop, "Healing Rituals of Africa and New Trends in Healing" with composer Halim ElDabh and musician/dancer Art Wohl in December, 1988. Following the workshop, a number of participants, some of whom were dance/movement therapists, and others interested in joining the profession, decided to continue meeting regularly. Some of the organizers had been meeting informally previously as an ad hoc group, sharing ideas and information. Once a newsletter was established, the group began to meet on a regular basis at Cleveland State University.

In April 1992, when the facilities were no longer available on Sundays due to financial problems of the University, Kathryn Karipides and Kelly Holt, then the Directors of the CWRU Dance Program, invited us to meet at Mather Dance Center. We have been meeting in Studio 2 during the school year ever since that time, now with the support of Karen Potter, current director of the graduate program in Dance at CWRU.

The Dance/Movement Therapy Study Support Group is an informal grass roots organization associated with DanceCleveland and Mather Dance Center, CWRU.

It is open to anyone who has a serious interest in the use of dance and movement as a form of healing. The group is devoted to learning and sharing ideas about dance/movement therapy. It is not for personal therapy.
In a brochure published by the American Dance Therapy Association there is the following statement:

"Dance is the most fundamental of the arts, involving a direct expression of one's self through one's body. It is an especially intimate and powerful medium for therapy. Based on the assumption that body and mind are interrelated, dance/movement therapy is defined by the American Dance Therapy Association as, "the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the physical, emotional, social and cognitive integration of an individual".

Thus dance/movement therapy effects changes in feelings, cognition, physical functioning and behavior.

Meetings of the Dance/Movement Therapy Study/Support Group are held monthly on Sundays from 3 to 5 pm at Mather Dance Center during the University school year, September through May. There is no charge for attending the mini two-hour workshops that are led by individual members and invited presenters. A yearly subscription to the Newsletter is $5.00.

For more information, call Lillian Weisberg, Coordinator, at 216-932-8971 or email eppylew@juno.com.