Music, movement, and emotions: an inquiry with suggestions for the practice of dance/movement therapy

ABSTRACT

Emotions play a significant role in our lives. While the literature has shed some light on how emotions are evoked, not all aspects are well understood. Music and dance or movement have been shown to stimulate an aesthetic or emotional response and seem to affect each other. However, these cross-modal influences have only been studied in individuals who are passively engaged . Missing are accounts of how music affects dancers and moving affects making music, a gap which is especially salient considering the frequent application of music during dance/movement therapy sessions. In this paper, I present a vignette from a creative arts studio class and subsequently describe the use of a heuristic arts-informed methodology as a means of gaining greater understanding about the connection between music and movement and their influences on emotions. I connect extant literature to my own findings and derive suggestions for the field of dance/movement therapy.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• music
• movement
• heuristic inquiry
• arts-informed research
• dance/movement therapy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebekka Magdalena Dieterich-Hartwell

Rebekka Magdalena Dieterich-Hartwell, PhD, BC-DMT, LPC is a dance/movement therapist in Philadelphia, USA, with over 16 years of clinical experience. Her research interests are in the area of psychological trauma with a specific focus on the neurobiological effects of PTSD, in the connection between music and movement, and in using dance and movement as an acculturation resource for refugees, asylees, and immigrants. She serves on the Board of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the ADTA in public relations and is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at Drexel University.