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Readers Respond

Dance has proven therapeutic value | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun
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Ballet After Dark founding director Tyde-Courtney Edwards, left, leads rehearsal with dance ensemble members Asya Shaw and Devonte Tasker at Eubie Blake Cultural Center. Ballet After Dark helps survivors of trauma and assault to find healing through dance movements. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)

Ballet After Dark founding director Tyde-Courtney Edwards, left, leads rehearsal with dance ensemble members Asya Shaw and Devonte Tasker at Eubie Blake Cultural Center. Ballet After Dark helps survivors of trauma and assault to find healing through dance movements. (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun) (Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun)

I appreciate the article about dance as healing and the group Ballet After Dark that dancer Tyde-Courtney Edwards founded (”Ballet After Dark uses movement to heal trauma survivors,” Sept. 14). The use of dance as a healing form has existed in many cultures for many years. And it is always important to remind people of the value of this art form beyond performance.

I want to point out that there is a profession called dance-movement therapy that many trained practitioners use to enable healing. They work in psychiatric hospitals, with autistic children, with the elderly and dementia patients, and in private practice just to name a few applications. Practitioners receive a master’s degree in order to call themselves dance-movement therapists.

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So, while I want to distinguish between the use of dance used therapeutically and what is called dance therapy, I support and am very pleased to hear about the work being done by Tyde-Courtney Edwards.

— Sharon Chaiklin, Columbia

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