Creative Dialogues across Countries and Culture during COVID-19

Creative Arts Educ Ther (2020) 6(1):72–84 DOI: 10.15212/CAET/2020/6/13 Creative Dialogues across Countries and Culture during COVID-19 创造性艺术探索：新冠疫情中的国际跨文化对话 Abstract This article reports on an online collaboration among creative arts therapists (CATs) from the West and East during the emerging worldwide health crisis related to coronavirus. Four women were from China and were in a restrictive quarantine as the crisis was emerging in that country. Three CATs were from Guam, a Pacific island territory of the United States. The other CAT was from New York City. This group met once across several time zones in a ZOOM room. The goal was to develop arts-based communication about their personal subjective experience of the health crisis. Most of the members of the group were new to each other, each other’s languages and culture, and to using the Internet as an avenue for spontaneous expressive communication. The overall purpose of the meeting was to reach out to each other during this unusual and tragic time to develop collaborative metaphor making as a way to understand each other’s experiences. The group used improvised dance, art, poetry, and fairy tale making. The resulting metaphors suggested a complex combination of the feelings related to both the destructiveness of the health crisis as well as the positive feeling of creative connections among those from different countries and cultures in this dramatic time. Keywords: Creative arts therapy, Dance therapy, Cross-cultural understanding, Response to the health crisis, Coronavirus, COVID-19, drama therapy 摘要 本文报道了疫情期间东西方创造性艺术治疗师们之间的在线合作。随着疫情所带来的危机在中国出现，四名中国的创造性艺术治疗师进入了居家隔离中。另外三名创造性艺术治疗师来自美属太平洋岛屿领土关岛。最后，一名创造性艺术治疗师来自纽约市。这次活动中，该团体通过ZOOM会议平台跨越多个时区见面，目的是发展关于他们对健康危机的个人主观经历的基于艺术的交流。团体的大多数成员彼此都是陌生的，对彼此的语言和文化也不熟悉。我们希望利用互联网作为自发的表达交流的渠道。会议总体的目的是在这个不寻常且悲惨的时刻联系彼此并共同创造一些意象，以此来理解彼此的经历。该小组使用即兴舞蹈、艺术、诗歌和神话故事的方法。通过这次交流所产生的多种意象表明，弥漫在这个戏剧性的时代的，是一种与健康危机的破坏性以及来自不同国家和文化的人们之间创造性联系的积极感觉相关的复杂感受。 关键字：创造性艺术治疗，舞蹈治疗，跨文化理解，对健康危机的反应，新冠病毒, COVID-19, 戏剧治疗