نگاهی به عقب، رقص رو به جلو: برخورد یک دانش آموز با عمل حرکت درمانی رقص

Early clinical placements in dance movement therapy are students’ first encounters with the discipline as practiced. Clinical placement accentuates differences between class work, study and movement experientials (somatic learning) with other “normal urban neurotics,” and the actual needs and expressions of clinical populations. A student's remembered perspective produces a less complicated view of the medical and ethical issues faced by a therapeutic team. The author frankly reflects on her student work – and emotional confrontation – with developmentally delayed children and their caregivers in a day programme. She explores the revelations and paradoxes of therapeutic provision, including counter-transference, family structures, and local regulations.

Fieldwork necessitates a substantial leap from acquaintance with literature to the expectations of practice. This article derives from notes made as a dance movement therapy (henceforth DMT) student in clinical placement, tempered by the reflective stance of a professional handling her own populations. The central issue is the DMT student's first encounter with the actual embodied contexts, prescriptions and problems of professional DMT practice, and the ongoing development required for the work. I have sought to retain the novice's original perspective on our discipline while infusing this article with the benefits of continuing engagement and experience. Although these observations occurred during my placement with Ms. Susan Maling, a very experienced RDMT based in Melbourne, the issues addressed remain my own. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity of a placement in a well-designed and expertly run program, and to have been nurtured through my first startling discoveries of DMT practice by so generous a practitioner: Maling's guidance continues to inflect my work.