Barbara Mettler studied with Mary Wigman, before creating her own form of creative dance, barbaramettler.org -- check out the "language of Movement:

There is a universal language in which all people everywhere can express themselves and understand one another. It is the language of movement.

We are all using this language all the time. Whatever we are doing, the movements of our bodies express something of what we are feeling. Movement expresses the feeling better than words. For babies, movement (sometimes accompanied by sound and touch) is the only language. Human beings and animals often communicate with one another though movement. Even plants respond with movements of growth or decay to the gardner's care or neglect.

The language of movement cannot be translated into words. It must be sensed in the muscles. We have a muscle sense, technically called the kinesthetic sense. It consists of nerve endings in the muscles and joints which send messages to the brain telling us exactly how we are moving.
Try this: close your eyes, then raise one arm slowly forward. How do you know that you are raising an arm instead of a leg? ... How do you know that you are raising one arm and not two? ... That you are raising trhe arm and not lowering it? ... That you are raising it forward, not sideward? ... Slowly, not fast? You cannot see your movement. It is your kinesthetic sense that is telling you. We make use of this sense unconsciously whenever we move. Learning to use it with awareness and ontrol can enrich all our movement experiences.

The language of movement, like all forms of expression, can be cu;ltivated on the esthetic level and become an art. The art of body movement is dance. It is the primary art because everything we do involves movement.

Creative dance is a free approach to the art of body movement. It differs from other kinds of dancing in a number of ways. Some kinds of dance emphasize theatrical techniques and audience entertainment. Others perform traditional cultural patterns. Some tell stories or interpret music. Creative dance stresses natural body movement and free expression. Its purpose is to enable each one of us to create movement forms which express our individual feelings and together to create movements which express the feelings of the group.

We improvise. This means that we make up our movements while we dance. Instead of practicing learned movements, we practice improvisation. Improvisation is the freest form of dance. It opens the doors of dance activity to everyone. At the same time it challenges even the most advanced dancer because it calls forth maximum skill in the spontaneous creation of satisfying movement forms. It is not a preparation for some dance which will be performed in the future. It must be satisfying dance now.

Although each one of us is unique in body structure and temperment, we can all share the same movement feelings. While improvising, we can sense the movements which are going on around us and, by relating our movements to the movements of others, together create group movement forms.
Group improvisation is the most satisfying of all creative dance experiences because it enables us to participate in the creation of movement experiences that are greater than any we could create alone. We learn to recognize and develop movement themes as they occur, every individual contributing as much as he or she can to the movement of the group body. It is like a conversation. We do not know what we are going to say until we start talking and then we find things to talk about.

A group body, like an individual body, consists of various members, all moving differently but able to move together as a unified whole. Members of an individual body are hands, arms, feet, legs, head, and other parts. Members of the group body are people. An individual body can make movements such as stretching, bending, twisting, running and jumping. A group body can form circles and lines, divide, come together, follow a leader, and so forth. In our study of creative dance we explore basic movements of both the individual and the group body.

Creative dance is the pure art of body movement, underived from any other art and undiluted by non-dance elements. Like every art, it uses a certain material and a certain instrument. The material of dance is movement. The instrument is the human body. Although it is impossible to separate the material from the instrument of dance, we must learn to analyze them separately in order to devise studies to sevelop skill in the use of the body-instrument and craftmanship in the creation of meaningful movement forms. Studies in the ujse of the body as expressive instrument include exploration of basic body movements, movement of separate body parts, tension and relaxation. Studies in the use of movement as expressive material include improvising with movement qualities of force, time and space such as forceful, forceless; slow, fast; large, small.

The meaning of creative dance is the feeling inherent in the movement, which begins as a sensation in the muscles then travels throughout the entire nervous system, involving the whole person - body, emotions, mind. The dance form is organic, which means that the dance grows out of itself like any living thing. Every movement has a life of its own, growing ot of the preceding one and, at its conclusion, giving birth to another." -- this piece continues on Barbara Mettler's website -- barbaramettler.org . . .


Norma Canner studied with Barbara, and evolved Barbara's work to encompass children, including those with special needs, essentially doing some of the first dance therapy work. Norma taught at Lesley College for many years.

Norma wrote a wonderful book, focusing on creative movement and children"...and a time to dance" which is, unfortunately, out of print, but can be found on Ebay -- among others --

www.alibris.com . . .

Google search on Norma Canner -- www.google.com . . .

An excerpt from the book: "For the young child, movement is a way of exploring and discovering his world and himself. As an infant he moves indiscriminately. He soon discovers and then learns to control his body. He uses his body to move about and explore first his immediate environment and then a broader world. At points in his development he discovers his arms, his legs, his eyes, and ears, and soon realizes that these are part of him. His self image is formed in part by these discoveries of and about his moving body. His body is his basic tool for dealing with his world before he learns to verbalize and intellectualize his thoughts and feelings.

As the child matures the pressures of society tend to repress his free body movement. The child must learn to control his need to move when it is time to be still, to control even his joy so that it fits with society's acceptable ways of expressing joy. Because these controls may be necessary in our highly complicated world, it becomes even more important that the child retain some outlets through which he can express what he feels and that he can find a satisfying way to create something unique and knwo the pleasure of involvement. Art and music have long been recognized as excellent media for the child's self-expression and creativity. In art, the child uses images, in music he uses sound, in creative movement he uses his entire body to communicate, to create, and to express. Movement is very much a part of the language of the young child.

What is creative movement? In this instance it is dancing with young children, providing them wiht an opportunity to explore and discover their bodies, their feelings, and the textures, shapes, and sounds around them, alone or in a group. It is an environment in which the shy child can lose his inhibitions when intribued by strange, exciting instruments and materials. It is an environment in which the aggressive child is given an outlet for pent-up energies or hostile feelings. It si when every child is offered a time to experience the joy and freedom of using his body and his creative uniqueness...a time to dance.

Perhaps the most important reason I believe that creative movement should be part of a child's life is that unlike many other activities in which children participate there is no right or wrong way to express or to discover. There is no failure. All that is required of a child is that he be involved.

While he is learning more about himself, he realizes that he can now use his arms, legs, eyes, and ears to discover a room, the sounds in a room, the child next to him, the textures of materials, the space in which he moves, and the rhythms he can make."

An excerpt from the introduction of Norma Canner's book, ...And a time to dance -- please see URL above.


Having been brought up in the environment of movement/ improvisation/creative dance, I can't help but see the strengths that such dance has to offer. Our bodies are in essence our instruments -- to dance with and to explore how many and in different ways that we can move -- because we are not forcing, but naturally letting our bodies flow from one movement to another.

My creative dance movement experience has made nothing less than a potent impact to my discoveries in choreographed dance. It's really a different sphere altogether -- to take all the structure, and let it go to feel natural, to explore...

Movement is potent, dance is powerful, put the two together... Wow!

Shadow.