Rossana’s response:

Yes, when I am thinking about my inquiry around Family Dance there are always new aspects and new questions arising. It is such a rich and interesting topic, so there are lots of things to think about. 

When exploring Family Dance, I always think about how dance and movement can support parent-child bonding and how this kind of experience helps parents to understand more about child development. Some aspects of my inquiry are: what’s the best curriculum? How to organize the movement explorations?  How to engage more parents into these experiences? How to help them be comfortable dancing and playing with their children?

Last year, I got very interested in exploring Family Dance with parents and babies. I participated in a project in Brazil focused on the relationship between mothers, fathers and their babies (under 12 months) and how the use of dance, movement, touch, sounds and music could affect this interaction. With two other artists, we led a series of virtual family meetings, where we brought different elements to facilitate the parent-baby interaction. It was such a joy to watch how babies and parents received the information and process their responses to the stimuli. 

This year, new inquiries have been arising as I am co-teaching virtual Embodied Parent Education (EPE) to women recovering from substance abuse in a residential center in Oakland, CA. These classes are part of Luna’s Moving Parents and Children Together (MPACT) and they were developed to support parent’s understanding of their child’s psycho-social, physical and cognitive development in relationship to the Basic Neurocellular Patterns articulated by movement educator Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. 

So, as new experiences happen, new inquiries arise and it looks like there’s no end for this process. I think I will be always investigating.