Internship Secured for Next Year

I have secured an internship for next year! One major thing crossed off my "To Do" list. I will be interning at a threshold program for adults with learning disabilities. I will have the opportunity to intern alongside an art therapist which I am very much looking forward to. Although I had been hoping to gain experience working with children, I think this site has so much to offer an am very much looking forward to being part of their team next year.

I wish there were more programs like this in Canada!

Oldest Dance Videos in Existence

If any of you folks are on Facebook you may have already seen this amazing news. The New York Public Library has just announced their release of oldest dance videos in existence. I've been able to catch a few moments of the videos but haven't had time yet to sit and watch as many as I would like or even see what all they have.

I've included in the post an article that has been circulating via Facebook with regards to this and the direct link to the New York Public Library's page. Enjoy!

 Facebook Article

New York Public Library 

Post NEADTA Conference

Although it is 2 days later I am still trying to process everything I took in on Saturday at the conference. The keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Macy, was inspiring and led the attendees through several tribal dances as part of his presentation. The day was filled with new knowledge, knowledge that challenged pre-existing knowledge and of course dancing!

The piece I was a part of opened up the conference and resulted in the dance party you see pictured below (photo courtesy of Jessica Sorentino). Students, alumni and faculty from Lesley University, low-residency and on-campus programs and Antioch University represented some of the attendees at the conference. The day was rounded out by several performances from students at the end of the day, allowing us to leave moved by their pieces and ready to go home to try to begin processing the day. Next year the conference will be held in New Hampshire at Antioch University with the national conference sometime in October. Until then continue to move and inspire!

NEADTA Conference

Getting excited for the NEADTA conference that Lesley is hosting tomorrow! It will be a full day, including a performance which I will be part of, but a great day. I managed to get signed up for two workshops; "Valuing Nuance: Expanding Expressive Repertoire in Multiply Handicapped Adults" and " Mindfulness in Motion: Using Mind/Body Awareness to Transform Movement Expression and Nurture Connection". Both sound interesting and can't wait for the day to arrive, stay tuned for the post conference report!

Introducing the Upsee

I came across this article the other day and was blown away by this invention. I couldn't resist sharing it with you folks. I can see how wonderful this invention is and the potential for its use by DMTs in the future.

Upsee Harness

Fathers Support Groups

This week I am working on a group project for my Theories of Dance/Movement Therapy II course. The project was to pick a family member of a child with multiple handicaps and design six therapy sessions to be used with this client.

Our group chose to do a fathers only support group as we believe they are under researched and thought it would be interesting to learn more. So far we have identified potential issues that fathers with children with multiple handicaps face such as feeling isolated from their friends and family.

It has been an interesting challenge trying to devise movement interventions for a group of males. The challenge comes from creating a safe space and having movements that the men may feel more comfortable with if this is their first experience with movement. However our group has risen to the challenge and we are coming up with some really great ideas.

We still have to continue doing some research on the topic before presenting next week. It's nice to be able to have some choice in what our projects are on so that we can really find one that we find interesting and can then get more out of the assignment! Stay tuned for how the presentation goes!

Summer Classes

Talk about time moving along quickly! The time to register for summer classes snuck up on me and I just received an email about Fall registration coming up on April 1!

As I am doing the program here at Lesley in two years, I do have to take three courses over the summer. Luckily, they won't take over my whole summer but only June and part of July. The summer courses are only offered in week long or weekend intensives which will make them a bit...intense.

I successfully registered for Standards and Ethics, Group Process in Dance/Movement Therapy and then had to decide between Yoga and Therapeutic Touch or Body Oriented Psychotherapy. I decided on the latter as I really enjoy the professor who is teaching it and let's face it, as many times as I have said I would like to try Yoga I haven't found the time to do so.

It's going to be a busy summer!