Movement For Health

She is a dancer and choreographer who's adapted classical Indian dance forms into an innovative therapeutic strategy for the country's large disabled population. Trained in the US , Tripura Kashyap has been a pioneer in the field of dance movement therapy (DMT) in India . She spoke to Niti Panta about the prospects and pitfalls of her unusual profession:

What kind of therapeutic potential is embedded in dance?

First of all, dance helps you become aware of your body and its expressive and communicative abilities. Once this awareness builds up, you learn to coordinate your body while moving better - this coordination leads to flexibility and ease of movement. Dance therapy looks at building up concentration skills. It helps to improve memory and sequencing skills through movement and rhythm patterns. It reduces hyperactivity as well as passivity. Through dance therapy, people are able to expand their range of motions - from being trapped in a very limited and stereotypical range, they can expand their repertoire to include movements they have not experienced before. Dance therapy offers help for a number of disabilities - from blindness to schizophrenia.

How does a non-verbal medium like dance prove therapeutic?

People find it easier to express emotions, ideas or incidents through movement. It is a more honest medium. Most people don't have sophisticated movement skills. Dance, precisely because it is non-verbal, brings out unconscious material in a very authentic manner.

Which dance forms does DMT constitute?

Most dance therapists go beyond style and form - Indian as well as western. They attempt to elicit natural or personal movement patterns from the people they work with. They do use certain elements from various dance forms like hand gestures, footwork or movement props. The idea is to use a lot of creative movement to facilitate free body expression.

Dance therapy has been developed specifically for people with disabilities. There is a schism in this country between the able- bodied and the disabled. People with disabilities are left out of many enriching experiences - therefore dance therapy will have a deeper impact in this area.

Dance therapy is described as a participatory, economic and non-medical treatment for a range of disabilities. Can you explain?

I think dance therapy demystifies dance. It cuts across socio-economic and linguistic barriers. It is accessible and participatory because each session is customised to the needs of the group. In that sense it is developmental and adaptive. A dance therapist's job is to find a way of getting movement into people's bodies. When medical treatments have been given up or sustained over long periods of time, dance and other art therapies can step in to act as stimulants.

How does this therapy work with the visually impaired and the hearing impaired?

It helps them improve body coordination and move with ease and confidence. Dancing is such an enjoyable and relaxing experience that people forget to feel sorry for themselves. In that sense, it helps them acquire a positive body image and feel good about who they are. It also enables the disabled to communicate with their bodies more freely. This leads to enhanced social skills. Yet, DMT is relatively unknown and untested in India because there are no professional courses in dance therapy here. Most trained dance therapists refuse to stay in India because they are expected to work on a voluntary basis. Perhaps because there are not enough people working in this field, dance is largely perceived as a performing art form. Dance therapy has also suffered from a lack of credibility because of the same reason. To most, it seems as though anyone can jump on to this bandwagon. But just as you can't practise without a degree in the medical profession, you can't in this field either. Just the fact that you are a professional dancer cannot overnight turn you into a therapist. It is essential to specialise in the field. There are professional two-year courses abroad, which include psychology, anatomy, physiology, sociology, modern dance and creative movement.

But there are plenty of untrained therapists around, aren't there?

There are and that's not good for the profession. The lack of training means that there are many who do dance therapy as a fad or because they are bored with the performance aspect of their art.

Are you doing anything to promote dance therapy in India?

In recent years, I have begun to train special educators, teachers, therapists and social workers through workshops and training programmes throughout India. The idea is not that they become dance therapists but that they are able to use therapeutic movement activities in their educational curricula or treatment programmes. Through these programmes, I am trying to build up an awareness about dance therapy.

You've recently received an exchange grant from Washington-based Ashoka Innovators.

The grant has been given to collaborate and come up with a cross art module, using dance and visual arts, to be used with groups of children and adults from multicultural contexts. I will be working with Veronica Ohlsson , a visual artiste from Argentina . I am also conducting workshops titled 'dancing hands' for dance therapists in Argentina.

Source: The Times of India,
Dated: June 3, 2003.