Dance therapy is of considerable relevance in today's Western functional society. On the one hand, due to modern technological developments in our everyday life, less and less physicality is required and being alive is restricted. On the other hand, pathological cases are increasing due to high pressure and censorship in a society that defines itself through performance, profit and production. The form of treatment through dance and movement enables body and psyche to reconnect. It can cause us to connect with the child within us, to give space to uncensored impulses and feelings and to allow new approaches.
„In all my unhappiness I was moving, and suddenly, this moving became an expression, a speaking out.”
(Mary Wigman)
Compared to other forms of treatment, the unconscious is the guiding principle and conflicts can surface. The form of therapy also has the intention of getting in touch with oneself, with other group participants and finally with society. In individual and group interactions we embark together on a journey of perception of our sensations, raising awareness of the body, our own movement language and our environment.
„Ultimately the body will rebel (…) because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind (…) because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality.”
(Alice Miller)
The senses are sensitized and inner impulses can find space and development. Through the connection of body and mind, inner processes in movement can be felt and observed, and finally dealt with in a protected environment.
"The body says what words cannot."
(Martha Graham)
Processing emotions, thoughts and observations in an abstract form and sharing them with other people can create new approaches. An inner feeling can find expression in movement and thus fulfill our deep-rooted basic need to communicate and to receive empathy from our fellow human beings. In the best case, this brings with it the potential for change, for individual states of mind and also for society. It is often possible to get to the core of our conflicts through movement and to recognize approaches to solutions that might have remained hidden to us purely at mental level. This potential of the body must be carefully exploited.
Is there a topic that is particularly preoccupying you? Do recurring conflicts arise in your life that you would like to examine more closely? Or maybe feelings whose origins are not yet obvious to you? Or do you just want to deal more with yourself and your own body in motion, to turn to your inner processes? Listen to you and take time for yourself? In a one-to-one session, we have this time to address your individual issues and needs. After an initial consultation, I make a movement offer, which can vary greatly from person to person. The development of the exercises also varies from person to person. I accompany your process and support you when emotions arise. After the session, we reflect together on what happened in a verbal exchange.
Request a single session
In the classic sense, my dance therapy offers take place in groups. In individual, partner and group interactions we sharpen our perception of our own body, inner processes and emotions. It's about the exchange in the group, listening to each other and sharing one's own feelings and observations. If you are interested, contact me so that I can inform you about the next offer of a group session.
Request a group session
The path of dance therapy cannot be traced back one-dimensionally to its origins. Dance as a healing medium has been found in the form of rhythms, group rituals or dancing ecstasy for as long as anyone can remember. However, the form I practice is mainly rooted in the emergence of a new worldview at the beginning of the 20th century. On the one hand, this brought about a different conception of dance in relation to the previously strict forms of classical ballet and court dance. With their revolutionary ways of thinking, dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Rudolf von Laban, Mary Wigman and others paved the way for dance as an individual means of expression and ultimately as a form of therapy. Expressive dance (Ausdruckstanz) was created with a focus on emotional and authentic movement. On the other hand, parallel developments in psychology enabled interdisciplinary cooperation and debate, such as between the psychologist Jacob Levy Moreno and the dancer Marian Chace, who tested treatment concepts at the same time and together, so that dance as a form of therapy found its beginnings in psychology. The discovery of the unconscious by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, the emergence of humanistic psychology by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, Harry Stack Sullivan's interpersonal theory, and physical/non-verbal treatments by Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen played important roles. The pioneers of dance therapy Franziska Boas, Lilian Espanek, Marian Chace, Mary Whitehouse and Trudi Schoop came to the therapeutic function of dance via stage dance, but they were certainly influenced by the then burgeoning worldview and psychological theories. In the 1940s, Irmgard Bartenieff and the aforementioned pioneers, each in their own way, further developed the concepts of Wigman and Laban in different places. Various directions of dance therapy with different focal points emerged.