Ande Welling Joins Our Team

She's here! She's here!

Lava Heights Academy is proud to announce that Ande Welling has joined our staff as our full-time Dance Therapist.

A little about Ande. Ande graduated from Columbia College Chicago with her Master's Degree in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling and a Graduate Laban Certification in Movement Analysis. Her work as dance/movement therapist has involved being with children and adults surviving brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, neurological disorders, trauma (emotional and physical), and addiction. Ande is an active member of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) and enjoys presenting at annual conferences, holds a leadership position on the PR committee, and was recently awarded the ADTA's 2013 Leader of Tomorrow Award. In addition to her clinical work, Ande has been dancing since she arrived on Earth, is a principal artist with Core Project Chicago, and has danced with Braided Light Dance Project, Matter Dance Company, Columbia College Chicago, and is the co-founder of modern dance company, Solesbare Dance Collective. Her movement style is deeply influenced by modern dance, contact improvisation, yoga, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Laban, and Authentic Movement. Ande is passionate about creativity and health, performance as therapy, life long play, interpersonal neurobiology, and reclaiming dance as an inseparable part of life by dancing in grocery stores, natural spaces, down streets, really anywhere the urge strikes. Originally from a small town in Idaho, she is often drawn to nature and wide open spaces and finds much peace and healing when moving and creating in these settings. She loves mountains, ocean dancing, toads, lightening bugs, traveling the world, books, singing, water, and the color green. Ande is looking forward to continually carving out courageous and kind life adventures.

Ande, has added yet another component to our wonderful facility. Lava Heights Academy sees the artistic process as one that is essentially therapeutic, developing, and improving when guided appropriately. We see expressive and/or creative arts therapies, arts in education, and artistic training as an integrated and complimentary path to discovering and strengthening personal, family, and community identity and relationships. Lava Heights is a facility where an adolescent residential treatment center, a fine arts academy, and an accredited secondary education program are merged into one dynamic program. We are thrilled to have Ande as the newest member of our therapeutic team.