Experiencing principles of dance movement therapy practice within transdisciplinary environmental research in South Africa

Abstract

This research study is an initial exploration of ways in which principles of dance movement therapy practice can be used in South Africa. Culturally-relevant principles in dance movement therapy practice were identified in an earlier phase of the study and informed a short-term group intervention within a transdisciplinary research team that dealt with water resources management. The research question for this phase of the study focused on the experiences of members of this group: How did researchers from a water resources management transdisciplinary environmental research group program in South Africa experience their participation in a group that adopted selected, culturally-sensitive dance movement therapy principles and practices? Hermeneutic phenomenology provided the methodological framing. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis influenced the identification of themes. We conclude that principles of dance movement therapy have relevance in multiple and diverse ways within environmental transdisciplinary teams, beyond typical therapy contexts.

Keywords:

• Dance movement therapy/psychotherapy
• ecopsychology
• complex social-ecological systems
• transdisciplinarity
• water resources management
• community engagement
• trauma
• embodiment

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the final approval of the paper.

Disclosure statement

Two of the three co-authors are qualified and registered dance movement therapists in their respective countries of residency. The Institute for Water Researcher’s Ethics Committee approved the research.

Figure 6. Participants created this sand tray from items of nature as well as the animal that symbolic represented each one of them as part of a free moving experience during Session Four ‘How to extend healing to wider community’.

Figure 7. Participants mirroring each other’s movements in the circle part of Session One ‘How to limit variables of power, privilege and difference’.

Figure 8. Participants moving together in a circle part of Session Four ‘How to extend healing to wider community’.

Additional information

Funding

South African funders: National Arts Council; National Research Foundation; Oppenheimer Memorial Trust; Water Research Commission; Department of Environment Affairs – Natural Resources Management Programme and United Kingdom funders: Common Thread and Santander.

Notes on contributors

Athina Copteros

Athina Copteros is a dance movement psychotherapist and transdisciplinary environmental researcher. Athina works at the art-science-embodiment interface, focusing on human and more-than-human environmental relations. Her work is trauma informed and draws on transpersonal psychotherapy, the discipline of authentic movement, embodiment, enactment and the phenomenological standpoint of interconnectedness.

Vicky Karkou

Vicky Karkou is the Director of the Research Centre for Arts and Wellbeing at Edge Hill University, a dance movement psychotherapist and an internationally known academic and researcher in arts and health and arts psychotherapies. Her research has received external funding of over 5 million from the funding bodies such as the ESRC, AHRC, NIHR and the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust. She has recently published her fifth book and has over 100 publications in peer reviewed journals.

Carolyn Gay Palmer

Carolyn Gay Palmer is an Emeritus Professor in the Institute for Water Research, and the African Research Universities Water Centre of Excellence, at Rhodes university, South Africa. Her research field encompasses transdisciplinary approaches to social-ecological justice and well-being.