Method
Dançar com o Coração® is both a therapeutic and a dance teaching-learning method, integrating the psychotherapeutic model of Bioenergetic Analysis and Contemporary Dance. The main objectives of this method are to reprogramme the natural process of development and to facilitate the integration of the three channels of identity expression – look, voice and movement.
Everybody can dance.
It intends to create opportunities for transformation, bringing into the adult’s authentic movement the corporality connected to each stage of development. It is a teaching-learning method of dance that leads the student to organic and conscious action.
A body free from blockages can move gracefully and follow its rhythm. What happens at the cellular level also happens at more complex levels of an organization. The pulsatile rhythm of our cells dictates the rhythm of our life and our movement.
The shape of our body obeys patterns of development that respect or do not their true nature. During the first years of life, the deviations in development introduce imbalances and asymmetries, hampering the full realization of our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual potential. And when we decide to dance, we dance within a defensive and rigid pattern, building shapes and movements that do not reflect the brightness of our true essence.
Dançar com o Coração® assumes that our anatomy & physiology have pulsatile integrity and that everyone can dance. It invites us to delve into the process of discovering our essence to create a sincere and genuine dance that reflects what we feel, what we are at each moment and what we can become.
The psychotherapeutic model of Bioenergetic Analysis, coupled with the various techniques and methods used in Contemporary Dance, will allow, on the one hand, to unlock the physical and psychic tensions that inhibit the actual manifestation of our identity and, on the other, to rescue the expression of our solid and creative potential, through the reencounter with our authentic movement.
The Bioenergetic Analysis is a psychotherapeutic model created by Alexander Lowen in 1956, whose fundamental principles are primarily supported by Reich's psychosomatic conception. It consists of studying the human personality from the body's energetic processes. From the release of chronic muscular tensions, in a relational therapeutic situation, the individual can contact genuine emotions, understand their muscular tensions in terms of intrapsychic conflicts and conquer the vibratory capacity of the body, characteristic of essential joy. B.A., in its aspects of bodywork and analysis, allows an increasing awareness of the more profound psychic phenomena, producing insight and change.
In Contemporary Dance, we choose the improvisation work, the technique of Contact and Improvisation, created by Steve Paxton in 1972, the Body-Mind-Centering method developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and the expressive improvisation movement, Authentic Movement, created by Mary Starks Whitehouse.
We also work on the technical bases of Merce Cunningham, Katherine Dunham (integration of the Afro-Caribbean movement in Modern Dance techniques), David Zambrano (Flying Low and Passing Through techniques) and Myrna Renaud (musculoskeletal placement work Cuestion 7, Afro-Caribbean movement, voice-body work based on La Voz Que Sana).
Dançar com o Coração® is a method created in 2015 by Ana Beatriz Degues, a contemporary dancer, and Maria Goretti Coelho, a body psychotherapist, both living in Lisbon, Portugal.
It is for artists, therapists, educators and all those who like to dance and want to transcend the formal learning of a dance style to meet their original rhythm and authentic movement.
