Art and Healing

My first experience with art as a healing modality was as a teen in off-off Broadway theater. But that’s not the first story I want to tell about art and healing. My biggest best experience ever with art as a healing modality was as a dancer in rehearsal at Henry Street Settlement.

I was in my mid 20’s. It was a dance theater troupe. I was a member, simply a dancer. Every rehearsal we had homework. This time the homework was preparation for an improvisational dance that we would do. The improv directions that had been given a week before this rehearsal were to bring in two archetypal images. One to start the dance and one to end the dance.

My first image was the statue of Diana the Archer. I’m a Sagittarius and the Archer, at that moment, felt representative of who I was. I love that sculpture.

The dance improv was an improv with percussion. Along the walls of the rehearsal hall a rather long narrow space were percussionists, drummers, people with rattles and sticks, others using their hands to clap and slap on the floor and their bodies. Everyone was a member of the dance troupe. Who better to play with percussion than a bunch of dancers who worked with rhythms.

Have you ever had that experience of sound entrancing you? The percussion did it for me. Music has had that effect on other occasions, too. It’s why I chose the harp as an…