ABSTRACT
This first-person narrative, steeped in “thick description” of the U.S. dance therapist/author’s experiences when running a torture recovery program in Sierra Leone following the country’s brutal civil war, posits an innovative role for dance and dance/movement therapy (DMT) in community healing after war and organized violence. Featured prominently is case material from DMT interventions with Sierra Leonean adolescent war survivors, including a group of former boy combatants described in prior publications and a group of teenage females never before discussed in print. An expansive definition of dance is advanced, inclusive not only of celebrative body movement to music, but of certain indigenous funeral rites and large, choreographed processions. The author examines in detail the spatial and temporal dimensions of such “performances” for their potential value in deepening dance/movement therapists’ understandings—particularly those therapists working in developing world contexts and aiming to foster transformation in the face of debilitating illness, mental torment, and mortality itself.
