The power of dance: health and healing

This article explores the existence of common images in nursing and dance. Nurses can look to the performing arts and music to sustain their commitment to clinical practice. The dancer must bring the whole self to the dance: history, mind, body, and spirit. The dancer creates beauty and grace and interpretive images for the audience. Nursing involves "dancing on the edge" where one must balance Roach's five elements of caring with one's self to meet the needs of the patient. For both nursing and dance, excellence begins with a centering of the self in order to create and relate to the other. Through the dance, one comes to experience beauty and grace. Images from dance can nourish one's creative caring spirits.