Time: 8:00 – 9:30am New York / 1:00 – 2:30pm UK / 8:00 – 9:30pm Perth AU

Event Details

In this global webinar and book launch, presenters from 5 different countries, Israel, Germany, Australia, Canada, and USA, will share about their work as dance/movement therapists with clients who have experienced trauma, as highlighted in the recent book “Dance/Movement Therapy for Survivors of Trauma: Theoretical, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives.” The authors will address the interrelated global and fractured systems that engulf their clients and draw attention to how these systems affect and exacerbate traumatic experiences. They will present dance/movement therapy as a discipline that may foster restoration, wholeness, and healing in survivors of trauma and give personal accounts of their work with various populations. Lastly, presenters will reflect on their own processes of writing about psychological trauma during the global, traumatic COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors will represent three separate sections of the book: foundational concepts in dance/movement therapy and psychological trauma; clinical applications with various populations, and widening the scope of dance/movement therapy. More specifically, the webinar will begin with a presentation of the neurobiology of trauma emphasizing the effects of the global pandemic on the nervous system. Clinical examples will include dance/movement therapy in the criminal justice system in Australia and dance/movement therapy with refugees in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, multigenerational trauma will be addressed through the example of Holocaust Descendants. The webinar will end with a recap of the responsibility of dance/movement therapists to be advocates for the healing power of movement and connection.

Learning Outcomes

• Attendees will identify ways by which interrelated global systems may impact traumatic experiences
• Attendees will gain an understanding of the mechanisms that may foster personal wholeness, healing, and resourcing
• Attendees will reflect about their own healing practices as they engage with the presented material

Speakers

Rebecca Barnstaple, PhD, DMT Alt-Route NCDT 2015is a Postdoctoral Fellow at York University engaged in research on theneurobiological effects of dance in health and disease. A graduate of the National Centre for Dance Therapy at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal (2015), she provides dance-therapy based programs in Community Health.

Ella Dumaresq (she/her) is a dance movement therapist who lives and works on Wathawurrung country, Australia. Ella is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne where she teaches DMT as part of the Master of Creative Arts Therapies program, a new graduate level training co-founded by the late Dr. Kim Dunphy. Ella recently completed her PhD: a feminist-informed participatory research project which explored women’s experiences of using DMT within a criminological context.

Dipl. Psych. Ilka Konopatsch is a licensed psychologist, dance therapist and Authentic Movement/BodyMind Approach practitioner. In Germany, she currently works as a psychologist, practicing DMT in a project for traumatized refugees. Her research interests are culturally sensitive DMT with severely traumatized populations and somatization.

Galit Zana Sterenfeld, PhD, is an experienced dance therapist and psychotherapist. She specializes in children/adolescents’ therapy and dyadic therapy, and works with post traumatic patients. She is a lecturer in Oranim Academic College of Education, in the Creative therapies in Education and Play Therapy tracks.

Jessica Young, MA, BC-DMT, LCPC, GL-CMA, Associate Professor Columbia College Chicago Dance Center. Recipient of the 2020 American Dance Therapy Association Excellence in Education Award and President’s Award, recognizing her leadership in comprehensively revising the Standards for Education and Clinical Training. She regularly presents and publishes on DMT and practices at New Prairie Counseling Center.

Curators

Anne Margrethe Melsom, MA, BC-DMT, LPC is a Dance/Movement Therapy educator with long teaching experience at Drexel University’s Creative Arts Therapies Master’s Program and is past Chair of the American Dance Therapy Association’s Committee on Approval. She is a dancer/dance-pedagogue from Norway, and Director of a Creative Arts Therapy Department in Philadelphia.

Rebekka Dieterich-Hartwell, PhD, BC-DMT, LPC is a dance/movement therapist and researcher interested in the neurobiological effects of trauma. She currently serves as Member at Large (Eastern Region) in the American Dance Therapy Association.