Date of Award

Spring 5-18-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA - Master of Arts

Department

Expressive Therapies

Advisor

Madoka Urhausen

Abstract

This graduate-level thesis explores the integration of mindfulness and Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) principles applied to the competitive dance community. Drawing from the personal experience and studies of DMT of the author, there is an exploration of the importance of mindfulness when fostering dancers' connection to their bodies and promoting wellbeing through a community-based project. A one-hour workshop titled "Moving and Dancing Mindfully" was conducted to explore these concepts with a competitive dance team (N = 18), aged fourteen to eighteen. The workshop took place at a dance studio located in a suburban, lower to middle-class community in the East Coast of the United States. The results include an exchange between the facilitator's informed approach and the participant's experiences. This data was gathered by creating a word cloud that included the dancer's responses to their experience and journaling of the facilitator’s experience and observations. The data was evaluated and interpreted through an arts-based analysis of the dancers’ responses.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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