Dance-movement therapy (DMT) started its development in Russia in the mid-1990s, with self-exploration groups and weekend personal growth training, rather than therapeutic work in clinical settings. Its beginnings were marked by the establishment of the Russian Association for DMT in December 1995. The creation of systematic training for DMT was one its major goals. The first project of our DMT Association was a 3-year post-graduate DMT international training that started in January 1996 in Moscow. I cannot but mention that I was encouraged and blessed to start this training under Joan Chodorow, who was my first DMT teacher. The intention at that point was not to reinvent the wheel, but to bring American and European DMT knowledge and experience to Russia. Miriam Berger, the president of the ADTA at that time, sent us books published by the ADTA. This enabled us to open our own DMT library. The number of books continued growing with the generous contributions of our guest teachers. We also published J. Chodorow’s book “Dance therapy and Depth psychology” (2009) and “Art and science of DMT” edited by Sh.Chaiklin and H.Wengrover (2017) in Russian. From the beginning we aimed for the collaboration of Russian and international experts from the field of DMT, expressive arts therapy and psychology to create an educational environment of professional exchange, growth and support. Since 1999 the DMT training with a state recognized post-graduate diploma has developed within the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis (IPP&P) and our DMT Association has held national DMT conferences every second year. A number of them have been with international participation. In 2021 we held the jubilee conference “Dance of generations: 25 years of DMT in Russia” whose key speakers included R.M.Govoni, P.Pallaro and T.Stromsted.
Our DMT Association was an active member of the European working group for
professional development from 1997 - 2010. In 2010 it became one of the founding
members of the European DMT Association and its full professional member.
Thus, DMT training and the DMT Association became the starting point for the development of DMT in Russia. It all started from scratch: nobody knew what it was all about, but the idea was in the air and people from the field of psychology began responding first. DMT self-exploration trainings and personal growth groups became the start of DMT practice.
Our next task was to find ways to adapt DMT methods to the Russian social and cultural context. The first 15 years were slow and difficult. To have a three – year DMT training has been always a challenge in a county where psychotherapists can officially be trained in 3-6-9 months. DMT is often confused with dance and movement practices which have a therapeutic effect. We have always kept certain ethics, a code of practice and training standards without compromise. There is no licensure for psychologists in our country. So, people who have remained in our community, share common values and recognize the necessity of high, professional standards. This is an example of slow growth providing good quality.
Now the existence of training and practice standards in the EADMT has served as a compass to navigate the development of DMT within the Russian psychology services, healthcare and educational systems. We train dance therapists who are
able to show good work in their therapy practice, thus building a good reputation both for our association and for DMT as an approach. Gradually and slowly, many DMT applications were developed in clinical settings, dealing with mental disorders, oncology, psychosomatics, child developmental disorders and autism, alcoholism, and the elderly, among others.
The DMT training grew into the Dance-Movement Psychotherapy department at IPP&P with several programs: introductory DMP course (72 hours) for all helping professionals, multimodal creative arts therapy (1year); developmental dance (1 year), DMP specialization (3 years), training for DMT supervisors (1 year) and “Authentic movement as psychotherapeutic modality” (2 years). In 2013 the Institute of DMT supervisors was established at our DMT Association as a permanent working group.
In conclusion the stages of DMT development in Russia can be described as follows:
- accumulation of existing knowledge in the international DMT field (1)
- adaptation of DMT applications to the Russian social and cultural context (2)
- development of our own original methods and clinical programs of DMT application; collaboration with multidisciplinary teams in different educational and clinical settings (mental and somatic hospitals, rehabilitation centers, kindergartens, schools etc. (3).
We are now at this latter stage and in the nearest future we would like to
articulate more the traits of the Moscow DMT school. We are incorporating DMT online as a new possibility for practice and training. At the same time we are committed to the embodied dancing soul as face-to-face, breath-to- breath, heart-to-heart live contact for deep encounters and embodied empathy to preserve the fundamentals of being human. The Russian DMT community sees this as one of its missions in the coming decades.
