Keywords: dance movement therapy, health content relevance, documented practice study
Page #: 12
The article considers how to preserve the arts therapy in institutional and community contexts and how to communicate its outcomes. It asks the question: how do we sustain the dance arts programs in the settings that traditionally employ allied health and education professionals? How do we communicate the actions of the dance arts to those who are not familiar with the arts eld or its therapeutic interventions? The author will respond to these questions, drawing on the notion of the ‘liminal space’ and its ‘liminal space boundary’. She will first describe the broad outcomes arising from her dance movement therapy practice and associated creative arts interventions over twenty years in two different hospital contexts, a paediatric medical clinic, and a mental health clinic for mothers and infants; secondly she will examine other Australian dance movement therapy practice through a Grounded Theory study of articles in the Dance Therapy Association of Australia publications: DTAA Newsletter, 2001 and DTAA Moving On, 2002-2014. Loughlin proposes that key to the future of dance movement therapy is the use of the visible outcomes, and the communication of their relevance to the core business of the institutional and community contexts.