Live-witnessed supervision: The field supervisor’s role in dance/movement therapy training

Field supervision is a central yet underexplored component of dance movement therapy (DMT) training, particularly when supervision takes place on site within live clinical settings. This qualitative study examined how field supervisors experience and conceptualize their supervisory role, and how this role is enacted in everyday practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine experienced DMT field supervisors working across diverse clinical contexts. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three interconnected themes were identified. First, field supervision unfolds as a space of shared clinical presence characterized by heightened visibility, vulnerability, and relational intimacy, shaping both supervisors’ and students’ professional development. Second, supervisors described their role as inherently multi-systemic, involving simultaneous responsibility toward students, academic institutions, and clinical settings, with evaluation emerging as an ethically charged relational process rather than a discrete task. Third, supervisors positioned themselves as ongoing translators between academic theory and embodied clinical realities, navigating gaps between institutional expectations and field-based practice. The findings conceptualize on-site field supervision as an embodied, relational, and ethically complex practice constituted through shared presence and mutual witnessing in therapeutic action. To capture this modality, the term live-witnessed supervision is proposed. The study highlights the need for supervisory frameworks and training models that explicitly acknowledge the embodied, relational, and evaluative demands of field supervision, and that provide appropriate institutional support for supervisors working within live clinical systems.