TORONTO—A pair of psychologists, Dr. Blackstock and Dr. Valentin, discovered a connection between music and healing at Divine Performing Arts 2009 World Tour presentation on Saturday night at Toronto’s John Bassett Theatre.
“I was thinking about the real diversity of Chinese culture. We’ve seen very different elements of dancing and costumes and attitude. I always admire in Chinese people the patience, respect to other people and I could see the same elements you can see in dance,” said Dr. Valentin.
“As psychologists we really respect Chinese traditions of healing and psychological healing, like meditation, and bringing the spiritual context to the dancers was quite important.”
Dr. Valentin was intrigued by the premise in Chinese medicine that music can facilitate healing.
“That’s another element that I never knew, that in Chinese medicine is music. And definitely we should explore more in our culture the role of music and healing. Sometimes we use music just for relaxation, but definitely there’s room to explore more and learn from Chinese culture about the role of music in psychological healing,” said Dr. Valentin.
“It’s a wonderful connection,” said Dr. Blackstock,
Mr. Blackstock began his psychologist career in New York City. He went to school during the day and practiced dance at night. He was a semi-professional folk and modern dancer, as well as a singer.
“Visually it was wonderful, the costumes were incredible and the colours were great. I really enjoyed the colour and the movement. And the dancing was fantastic. I really loved the movement, very flowing and lovely, very nice,” he said.
The two psychologists work mostly with children, young adults, and people with brain injuries to help them do better in their education.
“We closely work with chiropractors and I found the majority of them got trained in China and they brought acupuncture, and they brought all that herbal medicine. So I think that our culture really benefits from the Chinese culture and we hope that we will see more and more emergence of Chinese culture here….”
Divine Performing Arts is made up of three companies, with the New York company staging the show in Toronto. This company will stage three more shows at Toronto’s John Bassett Theatre before moving on to Montreal and then to New York City for a run at the famed Radio City Music Hall.
For more information, please see DivinePerformingArts.org
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