Maria Fux is a world-renowned dance therapist. Born in Argentina to a Russian Jewish family, she was a classical dancer.
Maria Fux's approach to dance therapy is simple and compelling. People with physical and mental disabilities often suffer from tension—unable to communicate as they wish, uncomfortable in their own bodies. Rhythmic movement lets them express what they feel inside and rejoice in a body that can finally speak. Mind and body, separated by disability—as they are, to some degree, in all of us—find relief and joy in wholeness. That movement becomes self-expression, a release of tension, and in fact a healing force. Yet Maria Fux refuses to call her work "therapy." She calls it "research." A search for an open, creative, non-mechanical language—one that can hold emotion and feeling, and that helps each person stretch beyond the limits we all carry. In this language, everyone expresses themselves in their own way, within their own capacity.
This research into dance therapy began thirty years ago.
A friend of mine had a four-year-old daughter who was deaf and very ill, they said. "I'll teach her to dance," I proposed to her mother. "You're crazy," she replied.
Dancing, I began to search for communication through that child's silence.
I had given her a sweater; she wouldn't wear it, but—her mother told me—she would slip it under her pillow when she went to sleep. It was communication, even without words. But she didn't follow my movements. Soon after, a little sister was born. One day I made the gesture of cradling a newborn in my arms; she repeated it. That was the beginning of a communication that would grow. It was also a crucial first step in my research: the young person, the person with a disability—I prefer to say "different from me"—must understand the reason for the movement.
I never say: hold your arm this way, keep your back straight. I make movements and ask: do you like this or not? They can choose. And always, even the most severely disabled will choose the right movements.
Dance therapy, unlike traditional body language—which expresses meaning through movement—is less mechanical. It uses creative dance as a means to weave body language into healing work.
I'm not a doctor or psychologist: I'm an artist who has pursued this research into an open, creative language—one rooted in emotion, in inner expression, that helps us all push past the limits we each carry.
When a mother comes to me with a child who has difficulties, I don't ask what they are. I say to the child: please walk over there and come back. What's your name? Do you like to dance? I ask the psychologist or psychotherapist to observe her at the start and again after a month of work with me. There will always be visible improvement—small or large.
I remember a young man with severe cerebral palsy; after a year of working with him, one day he said to me: "Maria, how happy I am in my body!"
I am someone who knows her limits, who works with the body, who researches movement in relation to others, and who has developed an open methodology.
Anyone working as a dance therapist must understand the limits of dance as a supportive tool in therapy. We don't work alone; we work with the therapeutic team.
"How happy I am in my body!"
"How happy I am in my body!"Those who want to become dance therapists work with me and learn to work with disabled people through movement. I don't offer a course so much as a method—one each person, when ready, must develop through their own research. The results will differ from practitioner to practitioner. Each brings what they feel inside; each has their own movements and will express themselves differently after years of work. And the people with disabilities will each receive the message in their own way. All of them can move, understand, and express themselves—even though we often believe many cannot.
Dance and music are inseparable: music from every corner of the world and every kind. But we also work with rhythm itself—the rhythm of the heart, of breath, of the metronome, and also by "drawing music" with color and form. That's why dance therapy works with deaf people too. Really, many of us can hear, but we've closed ourselves off to the possibility that sound reaches the body.
Recently—Maria Fux recalls—I did a performance with an eighteen-year-old deaf girl who has worked with me for five years. She's deaf but can speak. "Dance is part of my life," Fernanda says, es mi libertad. I understood that silence can be danced: now my silence is different. It has life!"
- Sergio Sciascia, 1988