DTAA Committee
The general committee has a responsibility to DTAA members to fulfill the organization's functions as expressed in the Aims, which are part of the Constitution. The Aims include providing identity, representation and criteria for certification and registration (Professional Membership) of Australian dance-movement therapists. They also include providing opportunities for networking, publishing a newsletter, producing professional literature, organising in-services and conferences (professional development), and establishing resources (library; responding to enquiries). Others include addressing industrial and /or employment issues.
To achieve the Aims, a number of sub-committees are in place that report back to the general committee. These are Newsletter and Publications; Professional Membership; Professional Development; Interstate Liaison and Outreach; Promotions and Publicity; Industrial Relations and Employment and the Hanny Exiner Memorial Foundation. All DTAA activities or business come under one of these committees. The central committee meets every six weeks (at a member's home in Surrey Hills, Melbourne), where we receive warm hospitality, conducive to pleasant and social meetings).
Newsletter and Publications
The DTAA produces a bi-annual journal, distributed to members. Regular e-mail bulletins provide contact and up-to-date information in between journals.
Professional Membership
The business attached to PACFA (Psychotherapy & Counselling Federation of Australia) comes under the Professional Membership Committee. Following a great deal of hard work by the committee, particularly by our former President Denis Kelynack, we are now full members of PACFA. This move enables DTAA professional members to be included in the PACFA register, together with a list of professionals from other helping professions who will also have reached approved standards. The committee continues to meet on an as needed basis to handle professional membership enquiries and applications and to continue to address and upgrade the criteria needed to reach the required standards.
More about Membership
Professional Development
Regular professional development activities are organised by this sub-committee, led by Mandy Agnew. For further information see DTAA Events
Interstate Liaison
Each state has local member/s who act as local representatives for dance therapy and the DTAA. See Contact page.
Industrial Relations and Employment
Yet another committee which will hopefully develop further in the future, following enquiries regarding employment issues. We will do our best to address these, but if there are any members willing to assist in this area, we would be delighted to have you aboard.
Website sub-committee
Overseeing the DTAA website. Members: Kim Dunphy and Heather Hill.
The Hanny Exiner Foundation
The Hanny Exiner Memorial Fund was established in 2001. Its existence is due to the vision of Hanny's late husband, Bob, and the generosity and interest of their sons, Ron and Jess Exiner. The Fund is now a Foundation whose major purpose is to provide financial assistance for people undertaking research in the field of dance-movement therapy. It also aims to encourage a broader range of research and to increase understanding of dance-movement therapy methodology and its effects. More about the Hanny Exiner Foundation.
Committee Members:
Jane Guthrie (President)
Jane (B. App. Sc. Phyty, Grad Dip Movement and Dance, Dance Therapy Certificate, M.Ed {advanced studies in movement and dance}, Professional Member of DTAA) is a physiotherapist who has worked with dance for 30 years, mostly with physical populations, specializing in head injury. She has also worked with pain management, children with special needs and elderly patients and has done community work in preventative care with seniors and other groups. Jane is the author, with Jan Deans (Roydhouse) of Come and Join The Dance. She currently lectures in the RMIT Post-Graduate Dance Therapy program.
Kim Dunphy (Vice-President, website and resource sales)
Kim Dunphy (B.A., Grad Dip Movement and Dance, M. Ed.) is a community dance educator who has worked in the field of disability, including groups for adults and children in day training centres and special schools in Melbourne and country Victoria, at Noah's Ark Toy Library, in hospitals and as director of the community-based group BreakOut. Kim is co-author with Jenny Scott of Freedom to Move: movement and dance for people with intellectual disabilities. Kim is a Past-President of Ausdance. She lectured in the RMIT Post-Graduate Dance Therapy Program and is Manager of the Cultural Development Network, a small non-profit organisation that advocates for the central importance of cultural vitality in community life.
Kim is responsible for DTAA's website and for sales of DTAA publications. Kim is currently undertaking her PhD investigating the role of arts in social change in East Timor. Kim can be contacted at kimfdunphy@gmail.com or call 03 9598 0635
Ben Assan (Treasurer)
Ben Assan, (Assoc Member DTAA, Bachelor Child and Adolescent Psych Nursing, Grad Dip Movement Dance, Post Grad Dip Family Therapy, Adv Cert Couple Therapy), originally from Ghana, is a child and family therapist at the Austin Hospital. He uses his dance movement therapy expertise in his work with hard to engage adolescent and their families. Ben has experience in community residential and forensic mental health and has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Australian Journal of Psychiatry. Ben can be contacted at Ben.Assan@austin.org.au
Sharon Paetzold
Sharon Paetzold (Assoc Member DTAA; Grad Dip Ment Hlth Sc.(Child, Adolescent & Family Therapies), Adv Cert Gestalt Therapy, BSW (Hons), Dip Soc. Sc., Leiterin fur therapeutischen Tanz, Integrative Tanztherapie (DMT, Germany) works as a psychiatric social worker and psychotherapist with children and adolescents in a community mental health setting and private practice. Special areas of interests include – depression and anxiety issues, body image problems and eating disorders trauma and abuse, mother/infant dyads – postnatal depression and attachment issues. Sharon can be contacted at sharon.paetzold@gmail.com
Elizabeth McKenzie
Elizabeth (Cert. Primary Teaching, Cert Teacher-Librarianship, Grad Dip. Movement and Dance, Dip, Dance Therapy IDTIA, Dip. Classical Yoga and Meditation, Dip Steiner Ed, Assoc Member DTAA)
Elizabeth has been a member of the committee of the DTAA since 2005. Elizabeth is qualified and experienced in primary education, including Rudolf Steiner Education, and in teaching yoga and meditation. She has community and clinical experience with mothers and babies focussing on the mother-baby relationship. She is currently Director of Moving Together, a community-based dance therapy program for mothers and babies in the City of Boroondara. As the activities coordinator at Prague House in Melbourne, Elizabeth provides arts and recreation programs with an emphasis on the therapeutic.
Naomi Aitchison (Convenor of Hanny Exiner Foundation sub-committee)
Naomi's (Grad. Dip. Movement and Dance (IECD)) interests and endeavours in and on the edges of the field of dance-movement therapy have been wide ranging. Her professional life has included working with elderly people in many settings, psychogeriatric residents in institutions, young children, babies and their families, and intellectually and physically disabled people of all ages. She has also taught about her methods of working to students and practitioners of various professions. Naomi's involvement with DTAA goes back to the early 1980s before the association was dreamt of. As a member of AADE (now Ausdance) Victorian Branch, she was convenor of a dance therapy special interest group which eventually, through many transformations and much work by numerous individuals, led to the formation of the DTAA. Naomi's tasks on behalf of the DTAA have also been varied. She has served as Newsletter Editor and Compiler, Secretary, President, Resource Person, Librarian and Convenor of the Hanny Exiner Memorial Foundation sub-committee. Naomi can be contacted at naitchison@optusnet.com.au