April Dances Bring Advances 2

Fifteen years ago, Olie Westheimer, executive director of the Brooklyn Parkinson Group approached the Mark Morris Dance Company about creating a dance class for her clients.  Dance for PD©, a program training teachers and providing classes for those with Parkinson’s disease, is the result.

The program initially met with skepticism, recalls dancer-developer David Leventhal.  Medical doctors felt that dance is “frivolous.”  As Leventhal notes,  “There is a lot of misconception about the amount of learning and skill and brain work and physical work that somebody has to do to execute a dance.”

dancing

Helen Bronte-Stewart, a Stanford professor of neurology and former dancer, agrees.  “As physicians, we stress the importance of physical activity, social interaction and mental stimulation to our patients with Parkinson’s disease.  Dance for PD gives them all three.”

Here we have the same triumvirate of benefits noted in the research on contra dance and memory –  dancing provides cognitive and social stimulation in addition to physical activity.  But that is not all.

As Bronte-Stewart continues, dance is more than just physical therapy – “The PD dancers have told us this type of dance restores their self-image and brings them joy.”  Immersed in the activity, participants sometimes find they are able to regain function.  For example, during a flamenco dance routine, one woman found herself snapping her once-rigid fingers – “it just came to me,” she recalled in amazement.

April Dances Bring Advances 1

movement and healthIn late April we celebrate National Dance Week. This year’s festivities come with scientific evidence that dancing is good for you!  A research team based at Colorado State University found that contra dancing may help to fend off aging in the brain.

A four-year clinical trial followed a group of 174 healthy adults aged 60 – 79.  The group was divided into four parts.  One group did aerobic walking, another not only walked but also took a nutritional supplement, the third group participated in stretching and balance classes, and the fourth group attended contra dance classes involving a sequence of figures as dancers progress up and down a line.  Each group met three times a week for six months.

The study focused on the fornix, which connects the hippocampus with other areas of the brain and is believed to play an important role in memory.  Each participant’s fornix was measured at the start of study and six months later.  The integrity of the fornix increased in the dance group in contrast to declines noted in half of the other participants.

This finding led researchers to conclude that “there is more benefit in activities like dance, that simultaneously provide cognitive and social stimulation in addition to physical activity,” according to an article in The Denver Post.

This study of the benefits of contra dancing is just the tip of the iceberg.  Find out more in the next blog.