Suzi Tortora

I am a New York State Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT), Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), National Certified Counselor (NCC), and Board Certified Dance/Movement Therapist (BC-DMT) with my doctorate from Teacher’s College, Columbia University. I serve as consultant to the “Mothers, Infants and Young Children of September 11, 2001: A Primary Prevention Project” in the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University under Dr. Beatrice Beebe. I am an early innovator in the field of dance/movement therapy, bridging the fields of infant mental health, dance/movement therapy and nonverbal movement analysis. In private practice for over 40 years, I developed and am director of Dancing Dialogue LCAT LMHC PLLC [www.dancingdialogue.com] a private creative arts psychotherapy practice with offices in Cold Spring, NY and NYC, specializing in the role of nonverbal communication and the body-mind-emotion connection. Collectively, our art, dance, and couples/family therapists focus on themes related to all aspects of the parent-infant attachment relationship from conception to postpartum; early parent-infant attachment; parenting in the digital age; sensory processing difficulties; ADHD; autism; child/teen and family dynamics; trauma; pediatric medical illness; adult chronic pain; grief and loss.

I am the International Medical Creative Arts Spokesperson for the Andréa Rizzo Foundation, having created and continuing to be the senior dance/movement therapist at Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NYC, dance/movement therapy program for pediatric patients, since its inception in 2003. I received the 2010 Marian Chace Distinguished Dance Therapist award from the American Dance Therapy Association. I teach in Europe, South America, New Zealand, the Middle East and Asia and hold faculty positions in the USA, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Argentina and China. I also offer an international webinar-based two-year training called Ways of Seeing for dance/movement therapists and allied professionals. I have published numerous papers about my work and my book, "The Dancing Dialogue: Using the communicative power of movement with young children" is used internationally to train dance/movement therapists and allied professionals wanting to specialize in using movement, dance and mindfulness techniques in both psychotherapy and wellness programs. "Dance/Movement Therapy for Infants and Young Children with Medical Illness: Treating Somatic and Psychic Distress", co-authored with Israeli psychiatrist colleague Dr. Miri Keren was published in January 2023.