A critical reflection on movement observation and assessment through the lens of a Korean spirit-dance

Abstract

The assumptions of the body and spirit in dance/movement therapy (DMT) impact how we examine dance and their application for healing. This paper compares DMT that developed within Judeo-Christian worldviews and gimoo (qi-moo, or spirit-dance) that originated from Eastern, Confucian, Korean traditional medicine and Korean traditional dance. Cross-cultural critical reflections can offer new insights on different ways of observing and assessing movement for health as body-based practitioners and dance/movement therapists. The authors reflect on how our socio-culturally situated knowledge of the body and worldviews of health, dance, and healing frame how and what movement we see.

Keywords:

• Dance/movement therapy
• spirit-dance
• spirituality
• gimoo
• Korean dance
• movement observation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Koh Woon Kim

Koh Woon Kim, M.A. in Dance Movement Therapy and Counseling, Ph.D. in Performing Arts and Dance, explores the intersection of Eastern and Western approaches to psychotherapy. Her concentration examines the role of embodiment and the psychosomatic connection of movement in psychotherapeutic contexts.

Tomoyo Kawano

Tomoyo Kawano, is an associate professor and director of the master's in dance/movement therapy with a concentration in couple and family therapy program at Antioch University. Her scholarship focuses on dance epistemology and its explication with research methodology, ritual and ceremony, and critical pedagogy.