Dancing for Health - by Judith Lynne Hanna (Paperback)

About the Book

Dancing for Health explains the cognitive, emotional, and physical dimensions of dance in a spectrum of stress management approaches. Designed for anyone interested in health and healing, this book offers lessons learned from the experiences of people of different cultures and...

Book Synopsis

Dancing for Health explains the cognitive, emotional, and physical dimensions of dance in a spectrum of stress management approaches. Designed for anyone interested in health and healing, this book offers lessons learned from the experiences of people of different cultures and historical periods, as well as current knowledge, on how to resist, reduce, and dance away stress in the disquieting times of the 21st century.

Review Quotes

Dance, that double edged sword, ought to come with a warning label. Now it has one at last - Dr. Judith Hanna's book. It helps you explore dance, whether you see it as high art or sexy entertainment, whether you use it as therapeutic exercise or competitive discipline. Dr. Hanna understands it as only someone can who loves it as a fan, who practices it as a student, and who researches it as a scholar. To share her insights, she keeps the prose perky and the concepts clear.

Hanna draws on her own experiences as a life-long student of dance, on anthropological research, and on her worldwide travels to demonstrate the role of dance as a healing art for all kinds of stress. Divided into three sections-"Setting the Stage," "Historical and Non-Western Dance-Stress Relations," and "Western Dance-Stress Relations"-the book's 11 chapters explore dance as art, as entertainment, as therapeutic exercise, and as a competitive discipline. The author describes how numerous cultures have employed dance to deal with life crises, resolve conflicts, revitalize the past, and face the future. She also details the many physical and emotional pitfalls dancers encounter, for example issues surrounding body image. This well-written book will interest a broad audience, including health researchers, therapists, psychologists, dancers, and anthropologists.

Hanna, with her unique vision as a dancer and anthropologist, has written a wonderfully comprehensive book illuminating the interplay between dance and stress. By offering a cross-cultural perspective, she deftly describes dance across the world as both a strategy to communicate and relieve stress as well as a potential cause of stress to the performer and observer.

In an impressive, descriptive way Hanna elaborates that dance is a communication that we cannot express through words, a venue for storytelling while involved in a commonly accepted form of therapy.... Hanna's book presents a new and interesting perspective on how dance can be therapeutic and help relieve the stress response.... I strongly recommend this book to everyone, dance professional or amateur, including those with an interest in the health aspects of dance.

About the Author

Judith Lynne Hanna (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a senior research scholar in the Department of Dance at the University of Maryland, College Park.