Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow
- Paperback: 320 pages, avialable in e-book
- Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Pub; 1st edition (May 15, 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1853026530
- ISBN-13: 978-1853026539
Authentic Movement, created by Mary Starks Whitehouse and subsequently developed by Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow, approaches dance and movement therapy from a Jungian perspective. The basic concepts of Authentic Movement are expressed here through interviews and conversations with these figures and their key papers. They emphasize the importance of movement as a means of communication, particularly movement which is unconscious or „authentic”, emerging when the individual has a deep, self-sensing awareness – an attitude of „inner listening”. Such movement can trigger powerful images, feelings and memories arising from as early as infancy or childhood.
From the book:
We no longer know it but there was a time when movement was our language. It was long ago and we can’t remember, but we were born into an alien world in which the first movement was breathing – the sharp inflation of lungs that brings the first cry. From then on, we struggled and grew into movement, learning on our own, without being taught, how to stretch out and double up, how to hold our heads, roll over, sit up, creep, crawl, and one triumphant day, to stand, walk. Our learning was nothing we did on purpose. At first, our movement was random, erratic, but as our eyes focused and our awareness increased, we became able to reach out, grasp and look around us. We were busier moving than anything else in the world, and long before we had words we communicated how we felt through our bodies. Our smiling was total and explosive. When we said „Yes”, everything in us said „Yes”. When we said „No”, everything in us said „No. We were undivided.
Where did it all go? What happened? How are we now?
Mary Starks Whitehause: „Creative Expression in Physical Movement is Lanugage without Words”
Tags: authentic movement, Janet Adler, Joan Chodorow, Mary Whitehouse
