Break it then build again: An arts based duoethnographic pilot reconstructing music therapy and dance/movement therapy histories

•Researchers integrated movement and music in active arts based collaboration.•A critical approach involved individual reflective writing and collaborative dialogic reflection.•Embodiment aided in naming and deconstructing complicated histories.•Researchers each speak from their own positionality.•Future directions could encourage arts therapists to think critically and co-creatively about cross utilizing artforms. This arts-based duoethnographic project explores the phenomenon of a collaborative arts-based experience between a Dance/Movement Therapist and a Music Therapist. From a simultaneously personal and collaborative framework (duo ethnography), the researchers will explore the question of, “What emerges when a BC-DMT & MT-BC utilize their respective modalities in active creative collaboration to deconstruct the histories they have been taught?” Utilizing a critical lens rooted in healing justice and influenced by decolonial theory, the researchers name and begin to deconstruct the complicated histories of both clinical fields, attempting to embody and amplify the healing practices of movement and music that came long before the “founders” of dance/movement or music therapy as clinical fields. The researchers then engaged in an active arts-based collaboration, including individual reflective writing and collaborative dialogic reflection on insights gleaned from the literature gathering and integrative arts-based process. The researchers each speak from their own positionality. Possible implications of this project could be to encourage arts therapists to think critically about how they cross utilize artforms, and ways to more ethically and effectively engage with their own communities in culturally sustaining and co-creative ways.