As a part of an ongoing collaboration between LMU Dance and LMU Marital and Family/Art Therapy, freshman dance students have opportunities to engage in community building and self-care through art therapy.
This partnership sprung up when Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, professor and chair of dance, invited Joyce Yip Green, assistant professor of marital and family/art therapy, and director of LMU’s Art Therapy Institute, to visit her freshman Orientation to Dance course to engage dance in art therapy processes.
The dance and art therapy workshop first started in 2020 during the pandemic and has since then been a recurring visit once a year for the freshman dance students. “Roz reached out to me in 2020 and asked me to do a presentation for her intro to dance class. It was during the pandemic so the students were under a lot of stress, and she really felt like a discussion about art therapy and the therapeutic benefits of art could really help support her students during that time,” said Green.
“Community building and self-care are important for young dancers because dance is a highly competitive discipline and dance students train body, mind, and spirit no less vigorously than someone striving to be a professional athlete.”
Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, Chair of LMU Dance
The workshop is not only meant to stimulate creativity and reflection but to also create awareness surrounding the potential of personal and professional pathways within art therapy. The session is an opportunity for students to decompress while also serving an educational component in discussing how art-making can contribute to overall well-being and self-care in a community and classroom environment.
“Dance is produced and performed through the communal effort, not the competition for first place. So, any one dancer is really only as good as the community they have fostered around them. As is the case with any community, one can only give to that community if they have the inner reserves to do so. Self-care helps restore those inner reserves,” said LeBlanc Loo. “Community building and self-care are important for young dancers because dance is a highly competitive discipline and dance students train body, mind, and spirit no less vigorously than someone striving to be a professional athlete.”
Interdisciplinary collaboration is an integral component of the MFT program, and the department offers various workshops to across campus to provide participants with a healthy outlet for coping with stress and for emotional expression, this being one example of the work that they do. This partnership is just one example of ongoing CFA departmental collaborations that demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary work that further bridges the connections between different forms of art and creative expression. “What I really love about working with the dance department is just the way that we are able to integrate the idea of creativity and movement and the arts and bring it all together,” said Green.
The workshop is centered in healing and awareness but also creates a space where students can be vulnerable with one another. This facilitates a deeper sense of connection, reflection, and dialogue between students and their peers through hands-on creative practices.
According to LeBlanc Loo, “The art therapy practice with our colleagues in marital and family/art therapy gives dance students time for self-care, engaging all the senses, and nurturing joy and relaxation as we all sit on the floor together as a community engaged in art projects. It reminds all of us that expressing emotion can happen multiple ways, all of which are healthy.”
