Pusat Harapan Harian Bakti

                   9th  MAC  2011 ,  VLP  117 – Drama  &  Teater  Kanak-Kanak went to the  Pusat  Harapan  Harian  Bakti,  Balik  Pulau,  Pulau  Pinang as one of the courses project in collaborating performing art with therapy of childrens with special needs. The project, leads by Dr.  Aris  bin  Ahmad and participated by the students of Universiti Sains Malaysia was there to observe and evaluate the needed process to collaborate performing art in a form of therapy for the children.

 

From our observation, assisted by Puan R.Rajeswari, we were briefed about how the centre work with the community and with the children as well. The children that is attending this facility would have several symptoms like down syndrome, hyper-active child, and slow learning ability. Their main purpose of building up this centre is to train and rehabilitate childrens with special needs of basic living skill and to create equal opportunities for the children for their future occupation. The children was divided into two categories, fudamentals stage and the advance stage. In the fundamental stage the children was tought the basic living skills like toilet training, reading, writing, and receiving orders. This was tought with different approaches according to the level of the symptom of each children. the differences between the children affect their ability to learn and with different symptom, a different ways of approach needed. the advance level is where the children that has been able to work socially and able to execute given task. Most of them aged 18 years  old and above. They were station in the workshop as the worker for the centre, where they work with simple industrial material. Their work contributes the monetary needs of the centre and generating their own monthly income as well.

   From this observation, I have discovered that some of the exercise given to the children do came with the performing arts approach. the children was involed with performing arts, mainly dance choreography as a part of their training. According to Blanche Evan, the  approach emphasizes restoring the client to her natural potential for expressive movement and ”re-educating the body to a state wherein movement responses’ function” (Evan, 1951, p. 88). It also mobilizes the dynamic interaction between the psyche and the body. Toward this end the work includes’ dance education and movement rehabilitation in addition to emphasis on a deeper exploration of feelings and insight-oriented improvisation. The Evan method serves as primary, and appropriate for clients who possess the ego strength to tolerate in-depth self-examination.Psycho-physical refers to an experience that occurs concurrently on psychological and physical levels and describes the complex impact that the body as on the psyche, and that the psyche has on the body. A fundamental concept to the Evan’s method, psycho-physical implies that all human experience including emotional response, memory, and thoughts contain kinesthetic components. Body movement is a direct outlet for the psyche, thus, through dance, the psycho-physical realm can be fully expressed and explored to stimulate ihsight and mobilize therapeutic change. “To experience psycho-physical unity is a basic need” (Evan,1951, p. 88).

Mobilization refers to sequences of directives that are formulated to increase body awareness and broaden movement vocabulary through ‘the exploration of the elements of dance, that is, rhythm, space, intensity, body•movement, and content-. “A goal is to open up the client’s body without taking away defenses. Moving, expanding, and discovering the body without pointing it to content” (Evan, 1978,).

Three examples of mobilizations are:

 (1)  A directive emphasizing body structure, such as exploring the range of movement of the spine.

(2) A directive expanding the use of dance elements, such as gradually varying tempo from very fast to very slow.

 (3) A directive that encourages experimenting with new movement dynamics, such as to explore leaping, sliding, lunging, and exploding.

 This described on how the performing arts can be affiliate as a method of therapy towards the children with special need. The aproach would be more subtle as it was intertaining the childrens and  the childrens would be train subconciously.

 

ref.

 

Bonnie Bernstein,41-54,  1995,  Dance and Other Expressive Art Theraphies, Dancing Beyond Trauma: Women Survivor of Sexual Abuse, Routledge, NY