An Interview with Norma Canner Vivien Marcow

Vivien: Norma, are there any early childhood experiences that you can remember that paved the way for you to have become a pioneer in a new field? N o r m a : I was a middle child in my family and I think that this contributed to my need to be seen. I remember being cranky, tearful and often sad, yet at the same time I was also strong and funloving. Early on I developed a capacity for play acting and for performance. This was my way of being seen and validated by others. From the time I was ten years old I toured in and around Boston with a company presenting fairy tales for children. Instead of payment in hard currency for playing the child roles, I received free elocution lessons. Little did the director know that I would gladly have sold myself into bondage for the opportunity to appear Norma Canner, ADTR, is Professor Emeritus at Lesley College Graduate School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and author of A n d A Time to Dance. She is widely known for her work with the Department of Mental H e a l t h in Massachusetts, and for her work at Lesley College where she has trained dance/movement therapy students for 14 years. Since her r e t i r e m e n t from Lesley in 1986, she has devoted h e r time to private practice and consulting work, as well as limited teaching engagements both nationally and internationally. Norma has been active in the field of dance/movement therapy for the past 35 years. She has a t t a i n e d a national and international reputation for her pioneering work in using movement as therapy and for educating a generation of dance/movement and expressive therapists. It is a particularly appropriate time for Norma to share with us reflections upon her professional life. In her 71st year, she continues to offer clients, students, and friends t h a t unique magical blend of support and encouragement to take risks, and to continue to grow.

American Journal of Dance Therapy Vol. 12, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1990

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© 1990 American Dance Therapy Association

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on stage. The passion and commitment to create and to play different characters was an important way to learn about myself. I discovered that painful and angry feelings could be useful and that healing could occur through dramatic play and dance. I began to know and feel myself. V: Y o u r childhood predilection for acting led you towards acting as a career. Could you describe how your career in acting impacted on your g r o w t h a n d development as a dance therapist? N: My passion took me, as people in some deep psychic states say they are %aken," to New York at the age of 18 where I was committed to becoming an actress. They were difficult and magical years of learning,

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performing, struggling, and working with people with whom I felt at home. Artists living and working in New York were poor and we were all concerned with social and political issues. My political sympathies were supported and enhanced by my work in the theater. I appeared in a show called ¢~The American Way" just before the outbreak of World War II. This was a propaganda piece written by George K a u f m a n and Moss Hart. I appeared in another political play called ~'Medicine Show" about poverty in the South which dealt with socialized medicine. Frederick March and Florence Eldridge adopted me as their protege. Acting was an important w a y in which to learn self discipline. It was a struggle but essentially I felt good about myself. I knew that I had a skill and that gave me a raison d'etre. As an actress I learned to trust my feelings. The training that I had from Group Theater taught me that. How one feels about oneself is probably the most important feeling one has. It colors all the other feelings. Acting gave me the space and time to grow and explore a range of emotions. Performing helped me to become a teacher and in my work as a therapist. The discipline involved in acting is a fine honing technique for communication and self expression. Learning different roles builds character and empathy as does entering other styles and personalities. I learned about group process and interpersonal relationships. Most importantly I learned to improvise and the value of spontaneity and building and expanding on themes. This background in acting helped me to understand personality constructs in much the same way that I later learned about movement analysis as a way to conceptualize character and to communicate movement style and essence. V: How did you make the shift from acting as a career to dance~movement therapy? N: I began acting in New York between the Depression and the beginning rumbles of World War II. I married during this period and moved back to Boston. My husband then left to join the Navy. One of our children was born during the war, the other soon after my husband's return three years later. By this time my place was in the home, as wife and mother. We were growing, the war was over, and we were beginning to find what paths our lives would take. My husband had begun his career and after a few years I began to feel the needles of discontent stirring once again. I needed to find a way to express myself and there was no viable theater in Boston at that time. After stewing with it and feeling depressed I talked to a friend who was taking some dance classes. I had already studied dance in my theater training and early on in my career had performed in a dance movement piece entitled ~The Infant Prodigy." And so I decided to take some dance classes. V: Is this when you started working with Barbara Mettler?

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N: Yes. Around 1944. Barbara Mettler is the author of five books on movement including The Materials of Dance. She had studied with Mary Wigman and Rudolf Laban and had returned to the United States where she interpreted what she had learned into materials t h a t were accessible to everyone, not only to dancers. Barbara t a u g h t me basic dance, the materials of dance. Her way of working provided me with the roots and most importantly the belief t h a t all people could dance and t h a t dance had the potential for healing. This was certainly true for me. It satisfied my need for expression, was a way to express my inner life, and it was good for the body. I began to see t h a t this was true for others as well. Although Barbara Mettler does not consider her work to be therapeutic, I experienced her work as therapeutic and my beginnings as a dance therapist evolved from my work with her. As I became more involved in what I was learning, I joined a group of hers. This training program consisted of a three hour dance class followed by two hours of theory. I did my first teaching of creative movement in Boston for Barbara in a black church. In our group movement improvisations I noticed t h a t people began to share feelings and ideas on a much deeper level t h a n I had previously experienced. At t h a t point I did not understand the body/mind connection but I did notice the element of trust t h a t was created when people worked together in movement. As I was preparing to relocate with my family to Toledo, Ohio Barbara said to me ~You will teach dance." I said %o whom" and she continued ~You will know more about the creative process and improvisation in this work t h a n anybody from here to California." V: It seems to me that you have more than fulfilled this prophecy. How did you get started with the dance~movement therapy work when you moved to Ohio? N: My first job was at a YMCA where I introduced creative movement to a group of children. Becoming a dance/movement therapist began when a mother brought her five-year-old daughter to class one Saturday. The child had braces on both legs, her face was bright and eager, and both mother and daughter presented an attitude of confident expectation. I realized t h a t this was the moment of truth. It would be necessary to create a structure for this little girl t h a t felt satisfying and real, not patronizing. By asking the children to form a circle on the floor and my limiting the creative problems to specific body parts I learned t h a t limitations can provide a structure which can stimulate creativity and socialization. I knew, however, t h a t this would not be an appropriate ongoing experience for all children. This child had cerebral palsy. It was the beginning of my dance/movement therapy education. I knew t h a t I needed help. I asked for the name of the child's physician and as luck would have it he was not only interested but excited about my work. He t a u g h t me a great deal about cerebral palsy children and referred clients

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to me. We worked together with m a n y such children and I learned about different kinds of physical limitations due to injury to the neurological system. Each child had different kinds of problems and issues. I learned to work with these children and established ongoing dance/movement therapy groups. My work in the theater and with Barbara Mettler had prepared me for group work. I began to receive invitations to work with different kinds of groups including a group of children at a black community housing project. I learned from the people I worked with and t h a t was the most positive and strengthening aspect in my development. This has become part of my credo as a therapist. V: How were you able to start your work in the Departments of Mental Health in Ohio and Massachusetts? N: I had a group for adults in movement and one of the members of the group was a psychologist and a dancer. She began to recognize what was happening in the group when people began to talk about themselves after the movement sessions. She felt t h a t what I was really doing was group therapy. She invited me out to the hospital where she worked. In 1958 I was invited to take a position with the State of Ohio in a state hospital working on the wards with severely regressed patients. In addition to working with patients I also worked with attendants and staff, and the nurses on the unit were supportive and enthusiastic about my work. J u s t before I left Ohio I was offered a position working with the retarded and ironical as t h a t seems in the light of my subsequent professional development, I experienced some trepidation at the idea. After we had relocated to Massachusetts I was invited to give a workshop about my work to the New England Association for the education of young children. This led to an invitation from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health to do a workshop for the teachers of retarded preschool children. This was followed by a position in the department where I established a dance/movement therapy program at Fernald State School for the retarded in Waltham, Massachusetts. This was a time, in the early sixties when mentally retarded adults and children were being brought ~out of the closet" and more services t h a n had been previously developed were being offered to them. At first we used to work with children in the corridors at Fernald, and eventually the program grew so large and successful t h a t we were allocated a more appropriate space and eventually integrated children from outside the institution with the institutionalized children. This program was very experimental for its time and it started to have a life of its own. In fact it was very lively and a lot of people began to pay attention to the work I was doing. I was developing my own style by then and I began to understand t h a t I was providing a service to these children t h a t reached them in a way t h a t they had not previously been reached. These severely handicapped children were participating in the dance by using body

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movement and rhythm. It was this work t h a t reinforced my t h i n k i n g about the connection between sound, vocalization, and movement. I had always used a voice as an important element in dance with the sound coming out of the movement. Through stamping, clapping, chanting, and vocalization even the lowest functioning children could become a part of the community. It was the beginning of my awareness of the importance of interpersonal relationships at all levels of developmental functioning. V: Were there other influences on your work at this point in your career? N: When I was working on the wards at Toledo State Hospital I had heard about the work t h a t Marian Chace was doing. I wrote to her concerning my own work and she very kindly wrote back and sent me some of the materials she had developed. In 1963 I took a course with Marian Chace at Turtle Bay Music School in New York. I remember her as a strong, clear, supportive, and no-nonsense woman. Iris Fanger, a professor at Tufts and a dance critic for Dance magazine and the Boston Globe, was a colleague in those days. She was also the director of the Harvard Summer School in dance, where I t a u g h t for eight years. Iris asked me to write a bibliography and descriptive sketch about Marian Chace for the Schlesinger Library on Important American Women. In addition I worked with excellent people in the field of child development including Barbara J e a n Seabury, now a Professor at Brown University. She teaches child development to medical students and is a former director of the National Child Development Center in Washington D.C. I was invited with Barbara Jean Seabury by Polly Greenberg in Jackson, Mississippi to come and do creative movement groups with children and adults within the framework of the Head Start programs. Polly had been responsible for establishing these programs in the area. We drove out to the areas surrounding Jackson. These were really poor rural areas, where the people themselves had established the programs in a church with government funding. The Headstart programs became a place where the community could come together in a shared hope for the future of their children. As my work grew I started to train teachers and staff in the facilities in which I worked. I realized t h a t the people who work with people with problems, have so m a n y demands. Those who nurture could themselves benefit from movement and group process. I traveled widely, going into the field and working at different universities and hospitals. I developed a music and movement therapy program at Belchertown State Hospital, a movement therapy program for Perkins School for the Blind, and an experimental program for young people detained in the Juvenile Youth Detention Facility in Roslindale. I began to teach at Boston University

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with Burton Black, who was the head of the Department of Education. Burton Black was the person who had started the original Headstart program in Boston by going around and knocking on doors in the housing projects. It was largely through him that I began to work in Headstart Programs from across the state to Fall River and as I previously mentioned, to Mississippi. Now that I am 71, I know that I learned the most from my own experience. Probably all of us oldtimers developed in similar ways. You did the work and you experimented and you explored. You learned to find the psychological and theoretical framework that supported what you were doing and the individuals who were supportive and challenging, according to your individual bent. Finally, you attempted to integrate all of this into your work. Probably in no other field would I have had to reckon with so many factors and nowhere would I have become more accustomed to adopting new methods that work, even though I may not have known at the time why they worked. C.J. J u n g said, ~'The irrational fullness of my life has taught me never to discard anything, even when it goes against all my theories or otherwise admits of no immediate explanation." And I echo this sentiment. V: Norma, you are well known for your seminal book, first published in 1968, entitled And a Time to Dance. This book has become a classic in the field of working with movement with retarded children and other children. Could you talk about your approach to working with children? N: My work with children was additionally documented in a film by the same name as the book made in 1967, and another film entitled Nine Partners made in 1969, and Body Talk and Touching the World which appeared in a segment of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood on public television. I believe that every h u m a n being can express themselves through movement and that everybody has something to say. Movement is the language of expression of very young children and even children who are otherwise unreachable can respond in this language. What is necessary is the provision of a safe and supportive structure for this interaction. I believe that the self is a social structure and that the self arises and is known in connection to others. Thus the role of the therapist is in reflecting the self of the patient so that the inner child is seen and validated. I believe that each child knows what feels good and what is satisfying if she or he is allowed to develop without fear and the need to satisfy someone else's needs. I believe that the therapeutic relationship is the container providing the safe and supportive structure in which this can happen. Whenever possible in working with children I have always thought it important to work with parents. They should also be consulted and seen in therapy wherever possible.

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V: How did you become involved in the Expressive Therapy program that developed at Lesley College in 1973? N: At that time I was teaching in the child development department at Tufts University. When they started the program at Lesley College they invited me to become a part of the group and to lead the dance/movement therapy core group. The Lesley community, as it was developing, offered me the opportunity to become a part of a group that was searching and exploring together to find the best way to train creative arts therapists. I had a supportive group of faculty members with whom to grow. In my early years at Lesley I felt a great responsibility as director of the dance/ movement therapy core group, to shape the curriculum so that, as far as possible, it would meet the ADTA standards for registry which were in a formative phase at that time. At the same time I was also responsible for and committed to training students to become expressive therapists with auxiliary skills in other modalities of expression and treatment. Working with graduate students challenged me to grow in new ways and question again everything that I knew and did not know. My students have astounded and impressed me with how much they have learned and how they have grown on their own. At the ADTA conference in 1984 in Boston I looked around at who had organized the conference and who was there in attendance and I felt proud at the wonderful things my students had gone on to do and achieve. V:

What other influences have there been on your work over the years?

N: I have always admired the work of J a n e t Adler. I have both experienced and witnessed her work and have the deepest regard for her vision and integrity. Myron Sharaf, author of Fury on Earth introduced me to Reichian therapy. Myron had been on the faculties of both Harvard and Tufts Medical schools and had been a student and translator of Reich's work. His book explodes many of the myths about Wilhelm Reich. Myron taught me a great deal about individual therapy and a way of w o r k i n g focusing on the b o d y armoring. Reichian work is fundamentally bodywork. It pre-dates bioenergetics and offers a theoretical foundation not in my opinion recognized enough by dance therapists. Additionally I have had an abiding interest in social anthropology and have read widely books about literature and poetry as well as the fields of psychology and healing. I sometimes think that the fields of psychology and psychiatry are a theoretical way of analyzing what goes on in literature. I have also been influenced by paintings and other visual images, music, and other modalities of expression. My work has always been developmental and influenced by the psychological theories that emerged at the time. Because so much of my early work was influenced by and focused on

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children, the theoretical work of Mahler and Winnicott put into intellectual understanding the work I was doing. I studied Gestalt therapy which gave me a way of conceptualizing the significance of the work I had done in the theater and with dance. The concepts of spontaneity and being in the now correspond to the use of spontaneity and improvisations in dance/ movement therapy. V: How do you feel about politics and mental health today as compared to the early sixties? N: My interest in social issues really began when I was acting in New York during the years following the depression. I was able to find a direction for my creative and political concerns by putting them under the same umbrella. When I started working as a dance therapist in the sixties, this was a time when the idealism of John F. Kennedy made a difference both in politics and in mental health. The government was funding programs like Headstart which provided for the future of the children. In the aftermath of the Vietnam war, it seems to me, that successive governments have been channeling money out of the programs that dealt with poverty, housing and education and many programs have been discontinued. I feel that this is backfiring with the problems we are now facing with the homeless. Demographic shifts such as the increase in divorce and single parent households have accelerated the difficulties. Drugs and the difficulties of having basic subsistence needs met contribute to the problems we face. As therapists we should be directly concerned with these issues. V: When you look back on your 35 years in the field of dance~movement therapy, how do you view the development of the field? N: I have viewed an ongoing struggle for legitimacy. At last things are changing because the need is there, the socioeconomic structure demands change. I have much admiration for the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), for the work that has been done in setting standards and professional ethics, and the legitimization of the field in the medical model. A great many of my students have become registered dance therapists and have gone on to hold positions of leadership within the Association and within the field. In many ways my students are a microcosm of the macrocosm. Whenever I pick up an ADTA Newsletter I read something about their work as primary therapists, clinicians, educators, and administrators. I have sometimes felt that the language and rhetoric of explanation loses sight of the vision of healing through expressivity and response. I come from an artistic background where I learned along the way. I felt vulnerable at times but this vulnerability worked as a factor in prompting me to seek out new areas of knowledge and to make changes when necessary.

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V: What direction has your work taken since your retirement from Lesley in 1986? N: When I decided to retire from an active academic role I had m a n y misgivings and yet a very strong feeling t h a t this was a time to leave the Lesley community and focus in another direction. After so m a n y years of leading groups, I decided t h a t it was time to draw in and devote myself to private practice. Even though I miss my colleagues it was time for me to move in new directions. It is a part of my personality to push myself on when things are going well and when I have achieved some mastery in what I am doing. Now t h a t I am older and hopefully wiser, I am more patient with myself and for what I see in others. My consulting work allowed me the opportunity to work with people all over the United States and in Europe and this has changed and deepened my understanding of h u m a n interdependence. I am able to see patterns and similarities in variations in terms of body rhythms, body language, and culture. V:

What professional activities are you currently engaged in?

N: I am no longer interested in teaching ~%ow to," but in working more therapeutically and spontaneously. In 1987 1 was invited to Sweden as a keynote speaker in their first International Conference in the Expressive Arts. In introducing me to the audience Philip Speiser said t h a t he had always admired the simplicity of my work and I took this as a real compliment. In the evolution of my work this simplicity has translated itself into simply providing a space for something to happen. I trust t h a t given time and space, people will find their sources for healing. I believe in the importance of play and allowing play is at the heart of the work t h a t I do with the wounded children in the adults I see in my private practice. I believe t h a t people can find their own ways in which to grow and t h a t it is not just the safety of the environment t h a t facilitates growth but the safety of the body t h a t allows for this. Starting with the breath I encourage people to start out and reach out with the consistent and rhythmic return to the breath. Once they have experienced the safety of t h a t place in the body they can reach out to the farthest boundary of their own ability to express themselves. I do not look for a model of grace. Even in pain, awkwardness, angles, and anger, can come movement t h a t is expressive and authentic. V: In conclusion what do you have to say to those already in the field and those who are j u s t entering it? N: There was clearly a manifest destiny t h a t brought me to my work. I had no traditions or role model to follow. I have sometimes felt t h a t the field has suffered from the failure of its own vision where the struggle to be accepted in the community has overshadowed the power of the dance. I

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t h i n k t h a t you have to act on your vision. Without t h a t vision it is a wasteland and one has to learn to stay in the struggle. Students need to go into th e i r own process in great depth so t h a t t hey can learn compassion for the h u m a n condition.