Diversity Issues in Movement Observation
and Assessment
Christine Caldwell
American Journal of Dance Therapy
Publication of the American Dance
Therapy Association
ISSN 0146-3721
Am J Dance Ther
DOI 10.1007/s10465-013-9159-9
1 23
Your article is protected by copyright and
all rights are held exclusively by American
Dance Therapy Association. This e-offprint
is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish
to self-archive your article, please use the
accepted manuscript version for posting on
your own website. You may further deposit
the accepted manuscript version in any
repository, provided it is only made publicly
available 12 months after official publication
or later and provided acknowledgement is
given to the original source of publication
and a link is inserted to the published article
on Springer's website. The link must be
accompanied by the following text: "The final
publication is available at link.springer.com”.
1 23
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
DOI 10.1007/s10465-013-9159-9
Diversity Issues in Movement Observation
and Assessment
Christine Caldwell
American Dance Therapy Association 2013
Abstract Dance/movement therapy (DMT), like any psychotherapy, must operate
in ways that embrace and articulate diversity issues, making sure that power,
privilege, and difference are navigated skillfully on nonverbal as well as verbal
levels. This includes issues that arise in movement observation and assessment. This
article, by reviewing and extending existing literature in DMT and other fields,
attempts to suggest ways in which movement assessment may unconsciously enact
bias by subtly pathologizing how the ‘‘different’’ body moves and acts. This article
also suggests ways dance/movement therapists can contribute to social justice
pedagogy as it pertains to the moving body and to actively work for social justice
for those with bodies different from sociocultural norms.
Keywords Dance therapy Nonverbal communication Movement observation Movement assessment Diversity Social justice
Introduction
People move and belong to movement communities just as they speak and belong to
speech communities. This idea was embraced and articulated by early observers of
movement such as Hall (1969, 1981), Birdwhistle (1970), and Bateson (1980), all of
whom observed that categories such as culture, gender, and socioeconomic status
profoundly affect movement behavior. When dance/movement therapists began the
important search for universally usable movement assessment systems, this idea
This is a revised work of a paper originally published in S. Bender (Ed.). Bewegungsanalyse von
Interaktionen: Movement Analysis of Interaction (Caldwell, 2010) (Excerpted here with kind permission
from Logos Verlag Berlin).
C. Caldwell (&)
Somatic Counseling Psychology Program, Naropa University, Boulder, CO, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
may have been pushed into the background. As academics and clinicians now strive
to work in culturally and socially competent inclusive ways with clients who
embody differences such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, class, ability, age, and
sexual identity, dance/movement therapists have an opportunity to critically
examine assumptions and potential unconscious biases that may occur when
clinicians observe others’ bodies standing, sitting, gesturing, or moving.
Potential pitfalls in movement observation strategies that do not take diversity
issues into account may take the form of dance/movement therapists unconsciously
labeling movement behaviors as dysfunctional, restricted, or problematic because
the observed person moves as a member of an oppressed social category, and dance/
movement therapists are unconsciously uncomfortable with that category, or with
their differences from it. In this sense, DMT may want to extend its understanding
of somatic countertransference, defined by Ross (2000), as the ‘‘physical as well as
emotional responses aroused in the therapist’’ (p. 453) in reaction to the client, to
include issues of unexamined privilege, internalized body shame, and unresolved or
unconscious bias. It may also occur that dance/movement therapists may not take
into account that the act of clients being observed by members of a dominant culture
or social category (therapists) can result in members of marginalized categories
adapting their postures, gestures, tension flow, shape flow, and eye contact in ways
that are more relevant to power and privilege dynamics than personality constructs
(Henley, 1977). Though it has been amply demonstrated that movement is related to
personality and pathology (Cruz, 2009; Davis, 1970; Lausberg, 1998; North, 1975),
if diagnosticians think and observe only through the lens of personality and
pathology, they may fail to consider the variables of power, privilege, and
difference, variables that can be central to clients’ experiences and to success in
therapy.
Dance/movement therapy has traditionally relied heavily on movement observation as a central assessment and research tool. This has created a dynamic in
which a dance/movement therapist, statistically likely to be female, heterosexual,
physically able, and middle class, is trained and then expected to: (1) observe
transient and complex actions in an unbiased and detailed manner, (2) remember or
notate them accurately, and (3) come up with an appropriate interpretation or
assessment of the observed movement behaviors in a way that informs effective
treatment.
The likelihood, especially in agency environments, that a client will be
‘‘different’’ from the dance/movement therapist in some or all of these social
categories, is significant. While video has assisted the dance/movement therapist’s
observation and notation skills, it cannot be used in on-the-spot clinical situations.
Also, video will never be able to do the job of interpretation. Research that
examined both video and live movement observation skills has surfaced problems
with inter-rater reliability of movement assessment in some cases (Dayanim,
Goodill, & Lewis, 2006), and limitations in what behavior can be interpreted in
others (Davis & Markus, 2006).
The very process of one person being an outside observer of another, and that
observer having the power and status to comment on the health and pathology of the
other, can be fraught with peril. In diversity studies this process is named as a power
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
differential. Skill building that helps a therapist competently navigate power
differentials may take just as long or longer than movement observation training
(Johnson, 2001; Roysircar, Singh Sandhu, & Bibbons, 2003). Even when dance/
movement therapists have received and absorbed extensive diversity training, the
observed clients may have such a longstanding history of being oppressed by
members of dominant cultures that their movement behaviors may still reflect
sensible mistrust of being observed. While many dance/movement therapists assert
that this mistrust can be seen, notated, and accounted for, this assumption may be
overly optimistic (Davis & Markus, 2006).
While dance/movement therapists will always need to observe and assess
movement behavior, social justice theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory
have advocated for a more phenomenological approach to inquiry (McTaggart,
1997; Shildrick & Price, 1999). In particular, an inquiry that addresses power
differentials by asking verbally capable clients to speak about or move their own
‘‘lived experience’’ of their bodies (Boas, 2006; Johnson, 2009), treating the clients’
statements as valid information, is a source of authoritative knowledge that is on par
with information generated by external observation. Opposite viewpoints may aptly
point out that a phenomenological approach misses some information as well; that
any method of inquiry is limited. Therefore, new models for adaptive assessment
strategies may be needed. Within the phenomenological scenario, however,
observation, assessment, and diagnosis can be co-constructed by therapist and
client, researcher and participant, in a way that blends a right to autonomy and
justice, with accrued knowledge in the field of dance/movement therapy.
Diversity in Movement Behavior
Theories in dance/movement therapy have creatively struggled with the issue of
either the universality or the particularity of movement meaning. While acknowledging cultural differences in movement style, movement analysis literature tends to
commit to the idea that movement assessment forms are only describing what is
there, in terms that are culturally neutral and universally applicable (Duh, 2008;
Kestenberg Amighi, 1990; Kestenberg Amighi, Loman, Lewis, & Sossin, 1999;
Koch, Cruz, & Goodill, 2001). This premise also holds that because of the basic
human universality of movement, movement empathy becomes a valid means for a
therapist or observer to ‘pick up’ movement meaning from others (Koch et al., 2001;
Loman & Merman, 1996). Kestenberg Amighi (1990), for instance, notes that KMP
has:
…more than 60 categories of movement brought together into nine
diagrams… Since these categories of movement are not culturally recognized
categories, but rather unconsciously patterned ways of moving, they are not
readily subjected to observer effect, or observer bias, nor are they particularly
context-dependent. (p. 119)
LaBarre (2001) notes that this sense of universality in movement behavior
exemplifies what is called an ‘‘intrinsic meaning’’ position which ‘‘holds that the
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
ability to understand others’ nonverbal expression is innate and based on a body
language substrate common to humankind’’ (p. 100). The facial coding and emotion
researcher Paul Ekman (Ekman & Ellsworth, 1972) would also be a member of this
school of thought.
LaBarre also states that this sense of movement meaning being intrinsic is only
one of three paradigms an observer can work from, the other two being a cultural
school and the school of practical analysis. The cultural position posits that ‘‘body
language, like spoken language, is arbitrarily determined and simply learned and
that it is an egregious error to attempt to understand nonverbal behavior through
empathy as it would be to attempt to understand the concept of spoken language
through empathy’’ (2001, pp. 100–101). In postmodern philosophical and sociological thought, a number of writers assert that the body itself is socially
constructed, noting that dominant culture gets to do the constructing, often as a way
to marginalize those who deviate from the norm (Butler, 1999; Irigaray, 1999).
The practical analysis position does not attend to a nonverbal behavior ‘‘sign’’ or
symbolic function, but simply classifies how movements are performed, concerning
itself with ‘‘a person’s adaptive style with things and with other people as
physically, not only psychologically, experienced objects’’ (LaBarre, 2001, p. 142).
The changing context in which any movement occurs is crucial to its ultimate
meaning. Rudolph Laban typifies the practical analysis position, and his work was
refined and extended by Kestenberg (1995), Kestenberg Amighi (1990), Bartenieff
(1980) and Davis (1970), who all found that Laban’s analysis system, based in
simply describing movement behavior, surfaced a correlation between certain
movement parameters and psychopathologies.
LaBarre (2001), herself a psychoanalyst, carefully assembles evidence for and
against each of the three views of movement behavior, and ultimately recommends
that clinicians move back and forth between them, as each holds wisdom and
limitations. In this way, her work points out that dance/movement therapists can
surface what conceptual lens they are looking through as they assess their clients,
and take the courageous step to take off and put on a different lens on a moment-tomoment basis. Thus, dance/movement therapists can avoid the therapeutic hubris of
assuming that the lens is a clear reflection of reality and remain open to other ways
of knowing, in particular, to the client’s way of knowing.
Dance/movement therapy literature has attempted to articulate clinical practice
that works in culturally competent ways (Chang, 2009; Dosamantes-Beaudry, 1997;
Duh, 2008; Hanna, 1990; Kestenberg Amighi, 1990; Lewis, 1997; Pallaro, 1997).
Dokter (2007), for instance, found that the more therapists were from a culturally
isolated and homogenous upbringing, the more they experienced cultural dissonance
with their clients. Boas (2006), using participatory action research (PAR), has
developed what she calls the Transcultural Competence Project. As a result of this
study, she advocates that DMT build an understanding of cultural agency; that it
examine professional DMT practice across cultures, and that DMT develop
movement-based cultural dimensions concepts so that it can integrate anthropological studies of the body with existing movement analysis tools, and as a result refine
the interpretation of movement in DMT. She states:
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
Since the ground-breaking work of anthropologists such as Gregory Bateson,
Margaret Mead and Edward T. Hall… proxemic studies have highlighted
differences in how people of varying cultures experience and manage
movement and interpersonal space (Bateson, 1980; Hall, 1981).
One could build on this rich literature by conducting a meta-analysis of
ethnographic studies of movement in specific cultural contexts, together with
the more universalistic movement analysis and cultural dimensions literatures.
This would be a basis for identifying patterns and distinctions in cultural
movement and exploring their possible significance in relation to notions of
power, purpose and other social constructs. The resulting movement-based
cultural dimensions model could be used in theoretical and practical training
of therapists working in multicultural settings. In developing such a model, we
need to protect the tension between universalistic and particularistic perspectives. (p. 126)
Another important contributor to cultural competence in DMT is Patrizia Pallaro
(1997), who points out that culture is overlooked in psychotherapy even though it is
persistent and inevitable. She encourages therapists to become familiar with the
nonverbal expressive modes of a client’s culture ‘‘in order to avoid culturally-biased
stereotyping and ethnocentrism, as well as to fully understand the client’s
dynamics’’ (p. 227). Pallaro is particularly interested in how people immigrating
into another culture need to adapt to that culture, and that this can confuse how a
therapist views a client as psychologically adjusted or maladjusted. For instance:
Individualistic characteristics of the self in the Western perspective are in
significant opposition to the more socialized aspects of the self as conceived in
the Eastern world… Because of the American emphasis on self-reliance and
independence, therapists in the U.S. often interpret relationships between
children and mothers from Asian cultures as symbiotic and over dependent.
Needless to say, this oversimplification does not account for values deeply
ingrained in Asian cultures. (pp. 228–229)
Kestenberg Amighi (1990) described errors in the assumptions of current
developmental psychologists that assert maternal-infant eye contact as central to
healthy infant attachment, by providing evidence that many cultures de-emphasize
eye contact and instead navigate attachment by different (more whole body) means.
In a study validating Davis’s psychodynamic inventory, Cruz omitted the inventory
item of eye contact from the research, noting that cross-cultural differences rendered
it suspect as a valid measure (2009). Hanna (1990) has also contributed to DMT’s
discourse on culture and ideas of universality by stating:
Since the body is composed of universal features, most members of the
medical and therapeutic professions erroneously assume that the body is
experienced in a universal manner. Because time, space, and energy are
universals in human life, many professionals mistakenly believe all people
experience them the same way. However, assumptions concerning the psychic
unity of humans ignore the facts of cultural learning. Therapists deal with
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
disturbed and/or dysfunctional persons who occupy positions in on-going
sociocultural systems. (p. 118)
Hanna goes on to comment on the value of broadening our concept of culture by
stating:
Cultures, it should be noted, may be based on age, sex, ethnicity, race,
occupational group, and so on. The handicapped, mentally disturbed, and
mentally retarded may sometimes be conceived of as having their own
cultures. Therapists also have a culture. It is conceivable that they might
benefit by occasionally viewing it from an outsider’s perspective (Hanna,
1990, p. 116).
An example of this potential cultural disconnect between the perceptions of
therapist and client has been hinted by Henley (1977), who found that working class
children and children of color have to be nonverbally ‘‘bilingual’’ between their
race/class and the movement vocabulary of the white, middle-class world. This
dovetails with widespread reporting from people of color, as well as people with
different sexual orientations, that when they come into contact with the dominant,
typically white, culture they speak and move differently than when they are back
home amongst their own people (Johnson, 2009). Typically this involves being
more contained on a body level, as well as somatically signaling deference (Hanna,
1990). This nonverbal, as well as verbal, bilingualism is an adaptation to white
middle-class culture for reasons of safety, inclusion, acceptance, and a reduction of
the perception of threat (Thomas, 1998). Dance/movement therapists must assume
that this adaptation is likely to occur in their own therapeutic relationships as well.
An important contributor to the field of diversity and inclusivity in DMT is Meg
Chang (2009), who comments on cultural consciousness in DMT theory, practice,
and training. She noted:
Without first critically examining subtle forms of racial, ethnic, and cultural
bias that exist in DMT education and practice, there is a danger of foreclosing
communication among socioculturally diverse students and educators,
between therapists and clients, and among community participants and
facilitators of community-based healing arts events. (p. 300)
Observing that traditional DMT has been based on western European and North
American concepts of mental health, which stress the nuclear family, autonomy, and
independence, Chang expresses concern that DMT might implicitly privilege clients
who are verbal and self-disclosing, and who initiate spontaneous communication in
psychotherapy. Because these values become normative, she states, they can
influence how dance/movement therapists observe and assess movement. In
Stanton-Jones (1992):
As DMT became part of clinical treatment teams in psychiatric hospitals, the
dominance of the medical model of diagnosis and treatment stimulated the
codification of movement observation methods as counterparts to psychological evaluation and diagnosis. (as cited in Chang, 2009, p. 301)
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
She goes on to assert, ‘‘subtle ethnocentric monoculturalism (Sue, 2003) rather
than conscious discrimination can bias the interpretation of movement’’ (p. 302). To
integrate these ideas, Chang has coined the term psychophysical habitus (inspired by
the work of Pierre Bourdieu) to describe ‘‘the entire range of unconscious
associations to body movement—beginning with nonverbal movement observation’’
(p. 303). Psychophysical habitus includes aesthetic preferences, and ‘‘is an
embodied and encompassing, unconscious and unavailable to linear thinking, mind
and body prototype that is instilled preverbally’’ (p. 304). Chang is concerned that
dance/movement therapists are influenced by their professional training, habits, and
psychophysical orientation of their culture, when observing movement.
In a related area of culture studies, DMT research has, upon occasion, taken on
issues of sex role behavior and male–female differences (Davis, Weitz, & Culkin,
1980; Kestenberg, 1995). Noting that sex roles are often revealed in nonverbal
communication (NVC), these researchers have found that women tend to adjust
their movements according to the personality features of their male partners. They
also found that women tend to focus more on their partner, and seem to influence
them to exhibit less anxious and more relaxed nonverbal responses. These studies,
when applied to the cultural competency of movement analysts and therapists, can
go a long way towards discussing the possible clinical effects of our being a femaledominated field.
Though the discipline of DMT carries some tradition in the area of cross-cultural
competence, it has not yet substantively crossed over into critical commentary and
pedagogy on sexual identity, gender identity, ableism, classism, and ageism, as well
as taking on issues such as the somatic abuse of power and privilege via domination,
marginalization, and oppression. This work has been introduced by authors in
philosophy and sociology, articulating the various means where the body itself is
marginalized in society, and in particular how the ‘‘different’’ body, one that is
deemed wrong by means of its color, size, shape, configuration, age, ability,
demeanor, symmetry, posture, movement, gesture, etc., is oppressed by norms
developed by those in power (Burroughs & Ehrenreich, 1993; Cohen & Weiss, 2003;
Conboy, Medina & Stanbury, 1997; Csordas, 1994; Currie & Raoul, 1992; FaustoSterling, 2000; Grosz, 1994; Irigaray, 1999; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Leder, 1990;
Nasser, Baistow, & Treasure, 2007; Price & Shildrick, 1999; Weiss, 1999; Riskind &
Gotay, 1982; Spangler, 2002). According to Thomson (1997), ‘‘The body that acts
and appears different becomes a marked pariah and disrupter of the social order’’ (p.
254). The integration of this literature could be of tremendous benefit to dance/
movement therapists, particularly those who want to observe and assess movement in
competent ways, because movement assessment could, if not examined critically,
form a primary delivery system for the somatic abuse of power, via the implicit and
explicit imposition of unquestioned biases about movement onto clients bodies.
Another researcher who takes on this important area of inquiry is Hanna (1990).
She asserts, for instance, that the middle-class worldview unconsciously carried by
many therapists will clash with a lower-class client worldview:
Often, the lower-class individual is capable of insight therapy that involves
creative self-expression but the lower-class client is unwittingly rejected in
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
one way or another by the therapist who has different verbal and nonverbal
means of communication. (pp. 121–122)
A strong, non-DMT commentator in the arena of gender identity is Henley
(1977). She notes that many NVC researchers have remarked on gender
identification issues, to the point of talking about NVC that displays ‘‘gender
ambiguity.’’ She admonishes us to ‘‘…look more carefully at the terms we so
casually apply to interaction situations; ‘‘gender ambiguity’’ may instead be
dominance ambiguity. Labeling it as a gender problem tends to settle the issue,
unscientifically direct our attention to the wrong variable, and work politically (and
subtly) to preserve the status quo’’ (p. 140).
Another fertile area of inquiry for DMT may be found in discourse related to the
idea that some differences are more or less invisible to casual or even professional
observation. While categories such as gender, age, and race are often visible to an
observer, class, sexual orientation, ability, and gender identification are potentially
invisible. An area of inquiry DMT might take on would involve finding out more
about the lived, somatic experience of people who can ‘‘pass’’ as a member of a
normative social category if they want to, in contrast to those who cannot. Are there
differences in observed movement behavior as well? Are these people ‘‘bilingual’’
in their movement behavior, depending on whether or not they wish to remain
invisible in their difference? How might this be clinically relevant to dance/
movement therapy?
By expanding dance/movement therapists notions of difference to include other
social categories, such as queer, transgendered, bisexual, and disabled (or
differently-abled), to name a few, the field can contribute a somatic perspective
to the largely academic discourse currently in print about these important groups.
This would involve individual and collective diversity training, as well as
innovations in DMT research.
The Validity and Reliability of Observing and Assessing Movement Behavior
Are there movement patterns that are commonly interpreted in a way that is
invalid? We suspect that there is ‘‘conventional wisdom’’ within dance/
movement therapy and movement analysis that needs to be tested and
corrected. It would also be valuable to understand when a sense of conviction
or confidence in one’s movement interpretations is misleading and detrimental
to good practice. (Davis & Markus, 2006, p. 125)
The quote above brings us to a second line of inquiry of examining best practices
in current movement observation and assessment forms. Davis and Markus (2006)
have commented that in NVC research there are two types of studies, encoding and
decoding. Encoding involves skillfully observing what is out there, as exemplified
by Laban and his disciples. The second type of study, decoding, reveals how people
perceive and interpret observed, nonverbal behavior. Davis and Markus caution that
these two categories need to be kept separate, or a ‘‘decoding’’ error will occur when
they are confounded. An example they offer involves a rater who says that a facial
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
movement codes as sadness, but she doesn’t really know if the person is feeling sad.
The person could be pretending, or they could potentially be expressing difference
in a way that the rater does not understand. As dance/movement therapist Robyn
Flaum Cruz attests, ‘‘When assessments are used to document the process or
outcomes of the process for clinical research goals, the meaning of the movement
observed comes into sharp focus. Validity consists of the arguments and data that
support how assessment observations can be interpreted’’ (Cruz, 2009, p. 137).
Extending these ideas of the relationship between observation and assessment,
DMT has come to regard certain movement patterns as more or less healthy. There
is a prevailing assumption, for instance, that the greatest movement repertoire
correlates to the greatest psychological health, that simultaneous core and distal
initiation is healthier, and that coordinated, complex, and coherently interrelated
movement is associated with psychological health (Burn, 1987; Cruz, 2009; Davis,
1970). While these correlations may be robust, how they are operationalized and
enacted clinically in diverse settings becomes crucial. An observation that a client is
carving space or sinking in a certain plane, and a DMT intervention that relates to
that observation, becomes a decoding process that cannot avoid being filtered
through both the dance/movement therapist’s personal history as well as institutionalized biases internalized by the DMT field itself. What emerges on the other
side of that filter could be a distortion and a misattunement to the lived experience
of the person being observed. In addition, if dance/movement therapists are not even
analyzing people who embody differences such as physical handicaps (including
instruments included in their body maps, such as wheelchairs, walkers, and canes),
the validity of assessment tools is diminished. This notion can take us back to the
roots of movement observation. Birdwhistle (1970) stated, ‘‘The most comprehensive knowledge of kinesics can’t permit us to analyze the precise social meaning of
the content of an interactional sequence. On the other hand, we can detect, isolate,
and describe the kinesic behavior’’ (p. 86).
For instance, decoding errors may play out clinically in two possible ways: either
in how dance/movement therapists might interpret the behavior of clients in ways
that inadvertently solidify restricting and marginalizing social categories, or in how
they remain unaware of therapists’ somatic influences on clients, such that clients’
adaptations to their therapists are interpreted as less than healthy. Davis et al. (1980)
stressed that decoding research is important in DMT because it asks what movement
patterns are likely to be misinterpreted on first impression.
Movement may never lie, but sometimes it does not reveal what we think it
may, and at other times what we think it says is our projection. The real
challenge is to know when movement is a true indication or not and whether
we can accurately detect this in the moment. (Davis et al., 1980, p. 109)
Henley (1977), for instance, noting that nonverbal cues play an extremely
important and complex role in the maintenance of social order, finds that in research
settings how an interviewer sits, moves, and gestures influences the movement
behavior of the subject, especially in regards to dominance issues. She also asserts
that nonverbal responsiveness between interviewers and their subjects is inhibited in
the face of cultural/class differences. By centralizing the study of the nonverbal
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
influence of the dance/movement in the therapeutic relationship, DMT may begin to
craft a more nuanced understanding of the clinician’s effect on both what behavior
is observed and how it is interpreted in ways that promote social justice.
Boas (2006) recommends conducting evaluations of DMT practices across
cultures. She urges dance/movement therapists to combine self-assessment,
observation and interview methodologies to triangulate user, practitioner, and
third-party perspectives. Chang (2009) offers that:
Rather than having interpretation imposed or meaning assigned by a dance/
movement therapist who is not from a given cultural group, it is important for native
speakers to self-identify as cultural informants. Next, it is crucial to demonstrate
respect for the member’s opinions and suggestions—especially in reference to
assessment and diagnosis—by implementing local knowledge (p. 310).
In this author’s work, called the Moving Cycle, assessment itself is almost
entirely absent and considered almost completely unnecessary (Caldwell, 2002,
2008). The session begins in an observation-rich environment, called the awareness
phase, where the client reports inner somatic experience and the therapist
contributes exteroceptive observations. It may involve a male client noting that
his jaw is tight, and the therapist noting that as he said that he touched his jaw and
sighed. No interpretation of these actions is necessary for the session to proceed.
The next phases simply promote non-interpretive engagement with the movement
sequences that organize as a result of high quality attention to, and trust in, the
client’s somatic experiences.
Towards the end of a moving cycle session, a version of assessment occurs, that
of meaning making. Meaning making is not engaged in at all until the body has
completed a movement sequence experience. In other words, it is only at the end of
an experience that we can make any kind of good sense out of it. Meaning making
that occurs before the body’s buried wisdom is directly and openly accessed and
supported will only reflect clients’ cognitive constructs that mirror the problems
they came in with, plus the cognitive constructs that the therapist imposes. In
research, meaning making arises after data has been collected and analyzed. The
data comes from the participants, not the researcher. At the end of a session,
meaning making is initiated and crafted by the verbally capable client, with only
moments of mentoring by the therapist.
Assessment, then, may not always need to occur as a means of treatment
planning—setting goals with the client that are client-centered can do that, even
with some populations typically considered unable to muster the capacity to set
goals (perhaps they only fail to set goals in ways understandable and acceptable to
the therapist). It may also be unnecessary in many cases to translate observations
into interpretations, so that interventions can be generated. Observations themselves
can be so powerful that the body begins to organize usable movement impulses
simply by virtue of being seen in a descriptive, rather than interpretive, way.
Dance/movement therapy has historically expended a lot of meaningful and
creative effort in developing encoding systems for movement behavior, and
researching them for validity and reliability. By continuing to do so, DMT can
consistently remove errors and bias. By beginning to examine issues such as the
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
inherent as well as personal pitfalls in assessment, DMT can go a long way towards
eliminating the decoding errors mentioned by Davis and Markus (2006). This may
also enable us to centralize what anthropologist Brigitte Jordon (1997) calls the
authoritative knowledge of the body.
Inquiry Methodology That Centralizes Equity Issues
Jordon (1997) began her work with an interest in cross-cultural childbirth practices.
By researching what happens as a woman labors and delivers a child, both in United
States hospitals and in home births in developing countries, she became fascinated
by what she called the authoritative knowledge of the body. Where does it reside?
She noted that in any culture, certain people are empowered as authorities—people
that we imbue with knowledge about how the world works—whether they are
doctors, priests, presidents, or shamans. She used labor and delivery as a lens to
discover where any culture may locate its authoritative knowledge about the body.
Her findings, arrived by coding themes from audio transcriptions of hundreds of
birthing rooms, surfaced a cross-cultural difference. In the United States, doctors
and machines tend to know what is happening to a laboring woman’s body, to the
point of ignoring many to all of her subjective reports of her experience as relevant
to the determination of medical procedures and outcomes. In developing country
home births, the tendency is for the laboring woman (who knows her own body) and
the midwife (who knows about laboring bodies in general) to co-create an
authoritative knowledge about what is happening bodily, and therefore what
procedures need to be done or not done. Locating expertise about how the body
works and what it is signaling as coming from outside the body, from people in
power over that body, essentially defines any ism anyone would care to mention.
Though Jordon did not extend her work in this direction, dance/movement
therapists and somatic psychologists may become curious about their therapist/
client relational dynamics, and where authoritative knowledge of the client’s body
resides (Johnson, 2009). One way to begin to unpack this rich question is to turn to
what different research paradigms have to say about how knowledge is constructed.
Positivism is a method of inquiry that assumes that there is a real world out there,
and that we are capable of ascertaining its nature through empirical investigation,
rationally and objectively. Most modern experimental science subscribes to some
version of positivism. Constructivism, a postmodern paradigm, asserts that ideas
about the world are constructed in our minds, and that the constructs of the
investigator can’t be separated from the participant’s constructs. Critical theory, that
houses feminist, queer, disability, and critical race theory, offshoots from
constructivism. These inquiry paradigms attempt to centralize the voices of
marginalized peoples in order to challenge views of the world ‘constructed’ by those
in power and imposed on everyone else.
In research methodology that bases itself in one of these constructivist
paradigms, phenomenological inquiry tends to be chosen as the means of collecting
data, and the data is a reflection of the lived experience of participants. This requires
that the way participants construct their world is foregrounded to the point where
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
researchers may be moved and shifted from their own ways of constructing the
world. In addition, the purpose of research itself is re-envisioned—from an activity
that furthers the interests and career of the researcher to a project that must be useful
to the community in which the study occurs. From this commitment to an immediate
application to the here-and-now problems of a community, plus the advancement of
social justice, exciting new forms of research, that harkens back to the roots of
dance and the creative arts, emerge.
Performance ethnography and PAR are two of these forms. When a group or
individual is studied, that person or group become co-researchers in the project, and
the culmination of the research may involve some kind of performance or action
that allows the participants to creatively express lived experience, while at the same
time contributing to social issues (Freire, 2007). While these forms of research are
not meant to replace positivistic approaches, in DMT as well as all social sciences,
these newer forms of research may do more to get at persistent social ills than a
purely positivistic approach. What may become possible in the area of movement
observation and assessment is that these new research forms can be integrated in
such a way as to competently address decoding issues in DMT assessment.
Very few studies of movement behavior or assessment reviewed for this article
mentioned the lived experience of the participant (phenomenological methodology).
Exceptions can be found in the work of Fiasca (1993), Johnson (2009), and Boas
(2006), though none exclusively look at movement observation and assessment.
Again, the field of DMT must turn to feminist and other critical theorists, who tend
to reject universalistic paradigms about the body.
For us, the central point of feminist theories of the body is that they reject that
easy categorization, or any striving for a false unity that belies the sometimes
confusing but always productive tensions of disparate starting points,
perspectives, and aims… The body then has become the site of intense
inquiry not in the hope of recovering an authentic female body unburdened of
patriarchal assumptions, but in the full acknowledgement of the multiple and
fluid possibilities of differential embodiment. (Shildrick & Price, 1999, p. 12)
One means of looking at the ‘‘multiple and fluid possibilities of differential
embodiment’’ is to value the subjective report of sensation as much or more than the
supposedly more objective observation of movement. Marshall (1999) declares that
people have difficulty truly understanding each other’s bodily experiences because
people have trouble naming and describing sensation, making it difficult for others
to truly understand what the sensation feels like for that person. So, theorizing the
body can be tricky and ‘‘should entail reflecting on the language in which people
describe themselves and looking for divisions as a way of getting a better grasp of
totalities’’ (p. 70).
Asserting that the embodied self is created and recreated through interactions,
Marshall states that part of what is happening when we are looking to understand
our sensations is that we look to the experts who have written down and attempted
to describe women’s bodily experiences, an echo of Jordon’s concerns about where
and how authoritative knowledge is constructed. For example, Marshall was looking
to understand labor pains when she was pregnant, and she mentioned that she is still
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
unsure as to whether or not she had pain because she was trying to fit her experience
into what others had written about that experience. (Marshall, 1999)
Because of the difficulty in operationally defining inner, subjective experiences,
such as sensation, DMT may have neglected to include it in its inquiry methods in
ways that then inadvertently devalue it for individual authoritative knowledge.
While toxic for any body, this neglect may be particularly crippling for people
already ignored and marginalized for embodying difference (Gordon, 1997). By
trying to find ‘‘the truth’’ about any body, DMT may solidify a somatically abusive
status quo, as explained by philosopher Luce Irigaray (1999):
Truth is necessary for those who are so distanced from their body that they
have forgotten it. But their ‘truth’ immobilizes us, turns us into statues, if we
can’t loose its hold on us. If we can’t defuse its power by trying to say, right
here and now, how we are moved. (p. 88)
Gatens (1999) believes that bodies are overlaid and shaped by culture and are
essentially imagined:
This conception of the imaginary body may provide the framework in which
we can give an account of how power, domination and sexual difference
intersect in the lived experience of men and women. Gender itself may be
understood on this model not as the effect of ideology or cultural values but as
the way in which power takes hold of and constructs bodies in particular ways.
(Gatens, 1999, p. 230)
The previous two quotes hint that our concepts of what bodies are and how they
move may be located in the largely unconscious power dynamics of the mental
health clinician.
Butler (1993, 1999) has challenged society to ask itself what constitutes a body
that is worth protecting, a body that matters (is literally material), and a body that is
considered worth living. She sees people who define bodily norms (such as dance/
movement therapists) as ‘inside’—inside a group that holds the power to define who
is ‘outside,’ and therefore marginalized. She questions how one can live in a
marginalized body, because:
The limits of constructivism are exposed at those boundaries of bodily life
where objected or delegitimated bodies fail to count as ‘bodies’… Hence, it
will be as important to think about how and to what end bodies are constructed
and, further, to ask after how bodies which fail to materialize provide the
necessary ‘outside’, if not the necessary support, for the bodies which, in
materializing the norm, qualify as bodies that matter. (1999, p. 243)
Disability theory can also challenge DMT to reexamine its assumptions about the
normative body. Davis (1997) notes:
Society splits the body into good and bad parts-good hair, eyes, breasts-bad
armpits, excretory organs, teeth, etc. The tendency is to also split bodies into
categories of functional bodies and dysfunctional bodies, ‘‘normal’’ bodies and
disabled bodies. (p. 58)
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
Eli Clare (2001), a queer and disability theorist, may help us begin to articulate
how DMT can understand somatically centered social justice issues. He asserts:
Locating the problems of social injustice in the world, rather than in our
bodies, has been key to naming oppression. It has been powerful for
marginalized peoples, including disabled people, to say, ‘‘Leave our bodies
alone. Stop justifying and explaining your oppressive crap by measuring,
comparing, judging, blaming, creating theories about our bodies.’’ But at the
same time, we must not forget that our bodies are still part of the equation, that
paired with the external forces of oppression are the incredibly internal, bodycentered experiences of who we are and how we live with oppression. To write
about the body means paying attention to these experiences. (pp. 360–361)
Dance/movement therapy may be in a unique position to research and to write
about peoples lived experiences of their bodies, and of the oppression they
experience by virtue of being differently embodied. It can empower them with more
authoritative understanding of their movement behavior and patterns. It can assist
people to loosen the bonds of restrictive and oppressive social categorization of their
embodied experience. Weiss has commented, ‘‘bodies are marked by assumptions
made about their gender, their race, their ethnicity, their class, and their ‘‘natural’’
abilities. These assumptions, moreover, often tend to go unnoticed until they are
violated by a body that refuses to behave as it should’’ (Weiss, 1999, p. 2). Perhaps
DMT can assist the marginalized people it serves to refuse to ‘‘behave as they
should.’’
Where does DMT begin? Some simple and not so simple tasks emerge. Dance/
movement therapy can, when it engages in research, state the social categories of
the participants it studies, and analyze the data it collects in ways that include
variables of difference. It can seek out people who embody difference as
participants in research as well as co-researchers, devoting energy to nuancing
movement observation tools and treatment forms so that encoding processes value
and include their differences. It can empower higher functioning clients to assess
their own movement, particularly the movement that emerges as a result of highquality subjective inquiry and engagement free of normative assumptions. It can
develop culturally congruent and culturally inclusive (Chang, 2009) models of
dance/movement therapy. It can employ more phenomenological and social justicebased research methodologies, such as the qualitative interview, PAR, performance
ethnography, and community-based research. It can use conferences to increase
professional development via diversity training and training in innovative research
methods. It can rededicate itself to the social conscience and activism demonstrated
by many of its pioneers, and make it relevant to the 21st century.
Conclusion
This article has focused on articulating three main themes. First, that people move in
ways that express not only their personality and relative health but also their culture,
race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, ability, and power dynamics with an
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
observer. Second, that movement observation and assessment tools, as well as the
practitioners who use them, must constantly and vigilantly self reflect (and accept
reflection from others) for potential bias in these areas. This includes training
programs, research, and clinical applications. Third, other DMT methods of
observation and assessment that validate and include a client/participant’s inner,
lived experiences need to be developed and used alongside standard movement
observation and assessment tools.
Dance/movement therapists are on the forefront of developing and contributing a
critical pedagogy concerning the various ways dominant cultures can exclude or
marginalize the bodies of people who embody difference, both in visible and
invisible ways. Dance/movement therapy holds a special view on how this abuse of
power can be enacted in a therapeutic milieu rich with NVC. Dance/movement
therapy can help itself, as well as other disciplines, to use culturally and socially
competent assessment and observation methods. In addition, phenomenological
inquiry can be used to help validate each individual’s experience of their body as
being theirs, as being a powerful source of embodied, authoritative knowledge, as
being equal to others’ bodies even though their body is different, and as having
autonomy and human rights. Finally, DMT can offer a means to minimize bias in
observing and analyzing nonverbal behavior, and step further into the arena of using
DMT to engage with and promote social justice.
Acknowledgments A portion of the research involved in the writing of this article was funded by
faculty development funds granted by Naropa University to the author.
References
Bartenieff, I. (1980). Body movement: Coping with the environment. New York, NY: Routledge.
Bateson, G. (1980). Naven. London: Wildwood House.
Birdwhistle, R. (1970). Kinesics and context: Essays on body motion communication. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Boas, S. (2006). The body of culture: Transcultural competence in dance movement therapy. In H. Payne
(Ed.), Dance movement therapy: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Burn, H. (1987). The movement behavior of anorectics: The control issue. American Journal of Dance
Therapy, 10(1), 54–76.
Burroughs, C., & Ehrenreich, J. (1993). Reading the social body. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘‘sex’’. New York, NY: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1999). Bodies that matter. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist theory and the body: A
reader (pp. 235–245). New York, NY: Routledge.
Caldwell, C. (2002). The moving cycle: A model for healing. In P. Lewis (Ed.), Integrative holistic
health, healing, and transformation. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Caldwell, C. (2008). The moving cycle. In H. Weiss & G. Marlock (Eds.), Theories of body
psychotherapy. Gottingen: Hogrefe Verlag.
Caldwell, C. (2010). Diversity issues in movement analysis and assessment. In S. Bender (Ed.),
Bewegungsanalyse von Interaktionen: Movement Analysis of Interaction (pp. 61–78). Berlin: Logos
Verlag.
Chang, M. (2009). Cultural consciousness and the global context of dance/movement therapy. In S.
Chaiklin & H. Wengrower (Eds.), The art and science of dance/movement therapy: Life is dance
(pp. 299–316). Routledge: New York.
Clare, E. (2001). Stolen bodies, reclaimed bodies: Disability and queerness. Public Culture, 13(3),
359–365.
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
Cohen, J., & Weiss, G. (2003). Thinking the limits of the body. New York: SUNY.
Conboy, K., Medina, N., & Stanbury, S. (1997). Writing on the body: Female embodiment and feminist
theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Cruz, R. F. (2009). Validity of the movement psychodiagnostic inventory: A pilot study. American
Journal of Dance Therapy, 31(2), 122–135.
Csordas, T. (1994). Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Currie, D., & Raoul, V. (1992). Anatomy of gender: Women’s struggle for the body. Ottawa: Carleton
University Press.
Davis, M. (1970). Movement characteristics of hospitalized psychiatric patients. In M. N. Costonis (Ed.),
Therapy in motion (pp. 89–110). Chicago: University of Illinois.
Davis, L. J. (1997). Nude Venuses, Medusa’s body, and phantom limbs: Disability and visuality. In D.
T. Mitchell & S. L. Snyder (Eds.), The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability (pp.
51–70). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Davis, M., & Marcus, K. (2006). Misleading cues, misplaced confidence: An analysis of deception
detection patterns. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 28(2), 107–126.
Davis, M., Weitz, S., & Culkin, J. (1980). Sex differences in movement style: A multivariate analysis of
naive and Laban-based ratings. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 3(2), 4–11.
Dayanim, S., Goodill, S., & Lewis, C. (2006). The moving story effort assessment as a means for the
movement assessment of preadolescent children. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 28(2),
87–106.
Dokter, L. (2007). Cultural variables affecting client/therapist consonance: The perception of efficacy in
arts therapies groups. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Hertfordshire.
Dosamantes-Beaudry, I. (1997). Embodying a cultural identity. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 24(2),
129–135.
Duh, S. (2008). Acculturation and nonverbal interaction patterns in the relationship between parents and
their young adult children in Chinese–American immigrant families: An observational case study.
Unpublished master’s thesis. Hahnemann University.
Ekman, P., & Ellsworth, P. (1972). Emotion in the human face: Guideline for research and an integration
of findings. New York: Pergamon Press.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York:
Basic Books.
Fiasca, P. M. (1993). A research study on anxiety and movement. American Journal of Dance Therapy,
15(2), 89–105.
Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gatens, M. (1999). Power, bodies and difference. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist theory and
the body: A reader (pp. 225–234). New York, NY: Routledge.
Gordon, J. (1997). The ‘‘talking cure’’ (again): Gossip and the paralyzed patriarchy. In D. T. Mitchell &
S. L. Snyder (Eds.), The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability (pp. 202–222). Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Hall, E. (1969). The hidden dimension. New York: Anchor Books.
Hall, E. (1981). The silent language. New York: Anchor Books.
Hanna, J. L. (1990). Anthropological perspectives for Dance/Movement Therapy. American Journal of
Dance Therapy, 12(2), 115–126.
Henley, N. (1977). Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Irigaray, L. (1999). Our lips speak together. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist theory and the
body: A reader (pp. 82–90). New York, NY: Routledge.
Johnson, A. (2001). Privilege, power, and difference. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing.
Johnson, R. (2009). Oppression embodied: Exploring the intersections of somatic psychology, trauma,
and oppression. United States Association of Body Psychotherapy Journal, 8(1), 19–31.
Jordon, B. (1997). Authoritative knowledge and its construction. In R. Davis-Floyd & C. Sargent (Eds.),
Childbirth and authoritative knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kestenberg, J. (1995). Sexuality, body movement and rhythms of development. Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson, Inc.
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
Kestenberg Amighi, J. (1990). The application of the KMP cross-culturally. In P. Lewis & S. Loman
(Eds.), The Kestenberg movement profile: Its past, present applications, and future directions (pp.
114–125). Keene, NH: Antioch New England Graduate School.
Kestenberg Amighi, J., Loman, S., Lewis, P., & Sossin, K. M. (1999). The meaning of movement:
Developmental and clinical perspectives of the Kestenberg movement profile. The Netherlands:
Gordon and Breach Publishers.
Koch, S., Cruz, R. F., & Goodill, S. (2001). The Kestenberg movement profile: Performance of novice
raters. American Journal of Dance Therapy, 23(2), 71–87.
LaBarre, F. (2001). On moving and being moved: Non-verbal behavior in clinical practice. Hillsdale, NJ:
Analytic Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to
Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Lausberg, H. (1998). Does movement behavior have differential diagnostic potential? Discussion of a
controlled study on patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. American Journal of Dance
Therapy, 20(2), 85–99.
Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lewis, P. (1997). Multiculturalism and globalism in the arts and psychotherapy. The Arts in
Psychotherapy, 24(2), 123–127.
Loman, S., & Merman, H. (1996). The KMP: A tool for dance/movement therapy. American Journal of
Dance Therapy, 18(1), 29–52.
Marshall, H. (1999). Our bodies, ourselves: Why we should add old fashioned empirical phenomenology
to the new theories of the body. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist theory and the body: A
reader (pp. 64–75). New York, NY: Routledge.
McTaggart, R. (1997). Sixteen tenets of participatory action research. In Y. Wadsworth (Ed.), Everyday
evaluation on the run (p. 79). Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Nasser, M., Baistow, K., & Treasure, J. (2007). The female body in mind: The interface between the
female body and mental health. New York: Routledge.
North, M. (1975). Personality assessment through movement. London: Macdonald and Evans.
Pallaro, P. (1997). Culture, self and body-self: Dance/movement therapy with Asian Americans. Arts in
Psychotherapy, 24(3), 227–241.
Price, J., & Shildrick, M. (1999). Feminist theory and the body: A reader. New York: Routlege.
Riskind, J., & Gotay, C. (1982). Physical posture: Could it have regulatory or feedback effects on
motivation and emotion? Motivation and Emotion, 6(3), 273–298.
Ross, M. (2000). Body talk: Somatic countertransference. Psychodynamic Counseling, 6(4), 451–467.
Roysircar, G., Singh Sandhu, D., & Bibbins, V. (2003). Multicultural competencies: A guidebook of
practices. Alexandria, VA: Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development.
Shildrick, M., & Price, J. (1999). Openings on the body: A critical introduction. In J. Price & M. Shildrick
(Eds.), Feminist theory and the body: A reader (pp. 1–14). New York, NY: Routledge.
Spangler, D. (2002). Testing the cognitive model of eating disorders: The role of dysfunctional beliefs
about appearance. Behavioral Therapy, 33, 87–105.
Stanton-Jones, K. (1992). Dance movement therapy in psychiatry. New York: Routledge.
Sue, D. (2003). Overcoming our racism: The journey to liberation. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
Thomas, M. (1998). Estranged bodies and Vietnamese identities. Australian Journal of Anthropology,
9(1), 74–88.
Thomson, R. G. (1997). Disabled women as powerful women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde: Revising
black female subjectivity. In D. T. Mitchell & S. L. Snyder (Eds.), The body and physical difference:
Discourses of disability (pp. 240–266). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Weiss, G. (1999). Body images: Embodiment as intercorporeality. New York: Routledge.
Author Biography
Christine Caldwell
Ph.D., BC-DMT, LPC, NCC, ACS, is the founder and former director of the Somatic Counseling
Psychology Program at Naropa University, where she teaches somatic counseling, clinical neuroscience,
research, and diversity issues. Her work, called the Moving Cycle, spotlights natural play, early physical
imprinting, fully sequenced movement processes, the opportunities in addiction, and a trust in the
123
Author's personal copy
Am J Dance Ther
authoritative knowledge of the body. She has taught at the University of Maryland, George Washington,
Concordia, Seoul Women’s University, Southwestern College, and Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, and
trains, teaches and lectures internationally. She has published over 30 articles and chapters, and her books
include Getting Our Bodies Back, and Getting In Touch.
123