Dance and healing

Photographer: DG. Postprocessing by me

A couple of years ago I had the idea of documenting dance as a healing practice in  post Pol Pot Cambodia and among Khmer refugees, of whom there is a sizeable number in the UK.  I fell in love with Cambodia when I first visited it in 1998. I always felt deeply moved by its political vicissitudes and I grieved for the tragedy that befell the Khmer people in the last  decades of the 20th century.
My project combined two of the things I love the most, dance and photography. In a nutshell, I wanted to document the 'healing process' and community rebuilding achieved by means of dance, especially folk and ritual practices, using photographic images, to be exhibited when the project was over.  I wanted to work, for  this part of the project, with someone sensitive enough to be able to capture emotion through the camera.  I thought at the time of enlisting the help of a photographer whose talent I admired and whom I implicitly trusted. His work spoke to me and I believed he would do a great job. To my utter dismay, though initially interested, as time went on he admitted he was not convinced the project had any worth at all, or that I could take it to completion. He did not believe in the concept, dance and healing meant little to him and there was nothing I could do to inspire in him any genuine interest in the project, as it transpired. So this meant that there was little discussion about the images he would produce. Nevertheless we did a "pilot", with some portraits from the London Khmer community, including their celebration of a Buddhist festival, in order to obtain  some visual material to get us started and then I sent off the application. 

Photographer: Graham Johnson

There were problems with the way I had mapped out the project and the funding body I had applied to asked me to resubmit my application, once certain issues were addressed. They viewed  the idea of dance as a healing practice as fundamentally sound  but questioned the management of the project and asked me to clarify my position. What involvement had I had in healing?What involvement would I have in the healing dance process?Those were some of the questions they asked. 
At that point the photographer withdrew, telling me I had been wasting his time. 
I know from experience that sometimes projects are not successful in attracting support the first time round. You submit an application, get feedback and then resubmit and are successful the second time round. A bit like passing your driving test on your second or third attempt. So I was not inclined to see the request for resubmission as a defeat and was surprised at the photographer's reaction.  Later it dawned on me perhaps he was hoping to get a free trip to Cambodia, when it did not happen as initially planned he decided he had other priorities. A good lesson for me. One needs to choose one's collaborators very carefully.

Soon after I got feedback on my submission I decided some drastic action was needed and began to consider some other possibilities. I went into DMP training, feeling I really needed to have direct experience of dance as a healing practice and acquire some credentials as a 'healer' through sustained, recognised training, before reapplying, as it was clear I had to specify my involvement.  DMP in western culture, to some extent,  fulfills the same function as shamanism in other cultures. The DMP works, mutatis,  as a healer, paralleling what a shaman does, although the two are not exact equivalents. In my project with the Cambodians I was interested in experiencing   the application of both practices, as can be witnessed in contemporary Cambodia  through work done by some NGOs - the psychotherapeutic one informed by core western ideas about healing and well being, framed by psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, and the indigenous shamanic practices, informed by local Buddhist beliefs. The healing process would be narrated through poignant images. I felt this visual component to be an integral part of my project.
I shall not go into further details of the project as it began to reshape itself. All I will say here is that  while mulling this over for the past one and half year,  I felt at times so utterly broken inside that I ended up  believing, on more than one occasion, that my idea was after all too muddled  and I was ready to give it up and just concentrate on my DMP training, for the time being. 
 Imagine my delight when I found out about David Alan Harris. I felt filled with a new sense of purpose, like seeing light at the end of the tunnel. David is a certified DMP who works among survivors of human rights abuse and war. He has worked in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Zimbabwe. He is inspirational. Recipient of several honours and prizes, he has founded Global Wellbeing, an organisation that endeavours to ease recovery from war and organised violence through DMP. He says:


"Survivors of war’s atrocities must learn to live with what can never be forgotten. Simply resuming daily function means contending with tangible reminders of vulnerability and loss. Where entire populations have been targeted for abuse, the impact of these losses is magnified. Traditional, collective endeavors are often torn apart entirely. Especially in the developing world, post-conflict communities coming to terms with massive violence struggle with terribly complex obstacles, and all the more so where vicious rivalries remain deeply rooted and the worst of emotional wounds ignored".

Dance heals. Now I know that what I dreamt of doing is possible, is a definite reality, and can be witnessed in action. Not only that, I can also participate and offer some healing too.The  idea of working in Cambodia is still at the back of my mind, even though at the moment I am busy studying and acquiring new skills. I know I will do it and will even involve, when the time is ripe, a photographer who will embrace my project with sensitivity, respect and a sense of wonderment for the beauty of the task he/she will take on and will  deliver the kind of images I am after (or I will do it myself, it might be after all the best solution). To my mind the visual component of the project, the recording, through images, of the healing process achieved through dance, movement, and storytelling and the context where this occurs, is what will further help remembering, working on those memories. It will be a form of healing in its own right. 
One does not heal through forgetting, but through the very act of remembering.  It is that remembering which helps to come to terms with the pain and feel renewed. 

(All photos modelled by AlexB unless otherwise stated)