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5 Insights for Successful Interdisciplinary Work

How an Unlikely Team of Artists and Scientists Joined Forces to Research Dance as a Therapeutic Tool

By Texas Christian University

February 25^th, 2021

What started as a creative practice for dance performance turned into an interdisciplinary effort to research the science behind the art. Dubbed the ReWire Movement Method, this kinetic practice explores improvisational dance’s potential to tap into preconscious thought—the latent thoughts just below the surface of our conscious mind—to reset the nervous system for learning new movement patterns.

ReWire is the brainchild of Nina Martin, Ph.D., a professor of dance in the College of Fine Arts at Texas Christian University and an internationally known post-modern dance performer. After teaching the method to mixed-ability dancers in 2014, Martin discovered that ReWire offered relief for participants with movement disorders like cerebral palsy, providing extended moments of stillness and feelings of calmness.

Her unexpected discovery sparked a desire to dig further, leading to cross-campus partnerships and support. Martin enlisted colleague Eric Simanek, Ph.D., the Robert A. Welch Chair of Chemistry in TCU’s College of Science and Engineering, to strategize the best methods to conduct research and put data behind her art.

FORWARD MOMENTUM

The quest to explore how and why ReWire offered relief from symptoms of cerebral palsy united TCU faculty and students from a range of fields, from dance to pre-medicine, giving all a better understanding of fields outside their own.

Now, Martin and Simanek offer insights for successfully collaborating on interdisciplinary research.

1. Define what "interdisciplinary" means.

By reflecting on how the term interdisciplinary applies to your project or research, you may discover opportunities to make the effort more inclusive.

Consider these questions: Which faculty peers outside of your discipline could help shape your study design? How can you share ideas across the boundary between STEM and non-STEM fields? How do you envision your research being applied in practical situations?

“Real problems typically benefit from, if not require, input from multiple perspectives,” says Simanek.

For research into the ReWire Method, “interdisciplinary exists in between science and non-science—in this instance, dance. The richest opportunities for growth occur when disciplines that rarely mix collide.”

"If you don’t consider an interdisciplinary angle, you might miss a big opportunity to stimulate new knowledge," says Martin.

Dance professor Nina Martin (left) and chemistry professor and chair Eric Simanek (right) synched their right-brain and left-brain research methods to explore ReWire's therapeutic benefits.

Art Meets Science

The evolution from dance practice to a dance-derived intervention for people with cerebral palsy inspired Martin and Simanek to create and co-teach a new research-based undergraduate course called Dance and Cerebral Palsy. Four honors students—two dance majors and two pre-med students—signed up to join the class. With the faculty members’ leadership, the students collaborated to develop data collection methods, including quality of life surveys and software used to measure the change in the range of motion for subjects’ limbs.

The convergence of qualitative and quantitative offered the professors and the student researchers in each discipline the opportunity to learn each other’s research language. The class, which has now been offered across three cohorts, is a case study for interdisciplinary research.

Prior to the ReWire research project, Martin and Simanek teamed up with Cedric James from the TCU IdeaFactory to create a Broadway-style show for middle schoolers that used choreography to teach plate tectonics. In the courses Dance of the Continents I & II, Martin and Simanek led two cohorts of science and dance students who created the show, oversaw the initial performance and developed materials for widely distributing the educational musical. Since then, the show has been performed a dozen times with more than 1,000 actors and to an audience of more than 5,000 peers.

2. Know your motivation.

Identifying your motivation and the motivations of others on your team “is important so that personal fulfillment can be realized by all,” says Simanek.

For Tanya Winters, a dancer who has spastic cerebral palsy, the motivation behind exploring ReWire was a very personal one.

“From my experience, it was really a sense of relief and the first time that my body had its own agency to speak without my brain,” she recalls. “It felt like I was taking a deep breath and relaxing for the first time in a long time.”

Winters was a part of Martin’s dance class when they first recognized ReWire’s therapeutic benefits.

“It was a happy accident,” she says. “We knew that we had to research from that point on.”

Winters' and Martin’s joint desire to push ReWire beyond the world of dance was the driving force for the team as they planned a research design to study the physical relief and emotional respite ReWire can provide those who live with the cerebral palsy’s relentless symptoms.

The first cohort of student researchers also had a vested interest in working on the interdisciplinary team.

“The students felt like they were on the ground floor of figuring out how to go about researching this phenomenon,” says Martin.

TCU’s commitment to provide one-of-a-kind academic opportunities to undergraduates helped frame the course structure. Students had hands-on opportunities to conduct evaluations with study participants, including one-on-one assessments and measuring joints.

Simanek adds that research conducted elsewhere might be examined under a different lens. “This project was guaranteed to give students an experience they wouldn’t get anywhere else, in any other educational environment, because of TCU’s historic commitment to undergraduate education,” says Simanek.

Eric Simanek, Ph.D., the Robert A. Welch Chair of Chemistry in the College of Science and Engineering and a research collaborator of the ReWire Movement Method.

“ReWire is highly collaborative, with the experiments designed, refined and analyzed by all — regardless of background. ”

Professor Martin (right) leads Heather McKay '20 (front) and Amelia Bachofen '20 (back) through the motions of the ReWire Movement Method.

3. Identify the deliverable.

Because research takes time, Simanek recommends pinpointing a deliverable upfront to successfully lead a group of interdisciplinary collaborators. Otherwise, you and your team could become lost and end up with a series of ill-conceived projects that don’t contribute to the ultimate goal.

Martin seeks to share the ReWire Method far and wide so those with movement disorders could benefit from its therapeutic application.

ReWire is already making a tangible difference in Winters' life.

“ReWire is about empowering each individual person to experience and develop a relationship with their body,” she says. “The most impactful thing to me [was developing] something for my personal toolbox that I can use to allow my body to speak and feel relief.”

For the ReWire research team, another deliverable was sharing the research itself. Martin and her students presented the data in 2018 at the Movement and Cognition Conference at Harvard Medical School. Sharing their findings with peers was a substantial step in demonstrating the connection between art and physical healing to further help people with movement disorders.

“It has been a thrilling journey to find that ReWire as a dance practice has such valuable application for people with movement disorders and to see my students learn ReWire and be able to pass that knowledge on,” says Martin. “For students to know that they are engaged in the creation of knowledge to benefit humankind is the optimum experience in a higher education.”

Amelia Bachofen '20 studied modern dance at TCU and was part of the first cohort of the Dance and Cerebral Palsy class.

5 Insights for Successful Interdisciplinary Work

Heather McKay '20, now a pilates instructor, was part of the ReWire research team as an undergraduate at TCU.

4. Budget your time and estimate the (human) costs.

“Research expands to fill the vacuum,” says Simanek. “The scope of a project is defined by what you want to deliver and the resources you have available.”

Like the implications of time, you must also consider the cost—not just monetary, but human—when collaborating across disciplines.

“It takes the community coming together to support interdisciplinary work—people thinking it’s actually worth the time, money and hours needed to research using an interdisciplinary model,” says Martin.

She credits the successful research across three cohorts to the team members' collaboration and ability to find commonality with peers who have different skill sets.

“I’m a qualitative researcher, but I needed to work with quantitative data to move the research beyond the dance world,” says Martin. “Sometimes we’re siloed in our disciplines, but coming together from different fields of study is where new knowledge comes from.”

Nina Martin, professor in the School for Classical and Contemporary Dance and creator of the ReWire Movement Method.

5. Stop and Smell the Roses.

After six-plus years as an interdisciplinary team, Martin and Simanek agree that you eventually must take stock in how far you’ve come. By reflecting back, you can ensure everyone's time investment has been justified, continue to understand the effect of your research, and inform or refine future actions, such as seeking external funding.

Their research has had impacts across the board: relief for people with movement disorders like cerebral palsy through an innovative, therapeutic dance-derived modality; student cohorts who have discovered new career paths and taken what they’ve learned into the next phase of life; and the growth that they themselves have experienced.

“My whole academic career has been impacted,” says Martin. She is now also an associate professor in medical education at the TCU and UNT School of Medicine, teaching a course, Ensemble Thinking, to actors who pose as patients for medical students.

Simanek says this project has taught him empathy as a researcher. “Working with Nina has allowed me to see the individual instead of the condition we’re studying,” says Simanek. “Empathy is not a word that comes up a lot when you’re doing quantitative research, but it’s key to a better world.”

5 Insights for Successful Interdisciplinary Work

ReWire at Work

Nina Martin’s journey to research the unexpected benefits of the ReWire Movement Method for people with cerebral palsy began in late 2014. Learn about the participants’ experiences in TCU Magazine.

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