Designing therapeutic approaches for language-disordered young children calls for the coordination of communication skills across the three developmental pathways: motor, social-emotional, and language-cognitive. The case study presented in this document examines the effectiveness of a dance-movement therapy intervention conducted over a 2-year period with a severely language-disordered young child. Alex was diagnosed with infantile autism at age 18 months. Dance movement therapy was begun at the age of 2.5 years, with the initial goals of increasing body awareness and reducing body tension in the service of communication. Dance movement therapy was selected because it was believed that children build a foundation for social expression based upon early nonverbal movement patterns. After a 6-month period of poor progress, an intervention combining both individual and dyad dance movement therapy was administered, with the goal of increasing both the frequency and duration of nonverbal interactional behavior. It was felt that the child-child dyad could best facilitate functional nonverbal communication. Alex subsequently experienced a tremendous leap in development, in which he maintained eye contact, participated in nonverbal turn taking routines, and responded appropriately to questions. Includes five references. (JDD)