Dancer Not Dementia

“I didn’t know she could move like that (…) I didn’t know he loved to dance.”

It’s not unusual for feedback from Sharing Dance Older Adults to include comments along these lines, especially from carers of people living with dementia. So often we notice what someone with dementia can’t do, but Sharing Dance helps to focus on what can be achieved. The music in the classes often inspires participants to start dancing, and the narratives offer opportunity to express themselves creatively. There is so much to be said with dance that extends beyond the words of spoken language. 

Dr. Rachel Bar, Director of Research and Health at Canada’s National Ballet School, shares her excitement about how carers for people living with dementia can use dance daily to inspire joyful and fun moments . For her, it’s “infusing a culture of dance while caring for our community (of people living with dementia)....It’s a joy to explore movement with dancers living with dementia and experience all the beauty and creativity expressed!”

The playful and imaginative nature of how persons living with dementia engage with dance challenges the stigma associated with dementia and supports social inclusion. This underscores the urgent need to make dance programs more widely accessible to persons living with dementia everywhere.

In a project studying Sharing Dance Older Adults, researchers found that dance encouraged connectivity between participants and their communities. In one example of the Commute to Work Dance, in which participants are imagining they are using some mode of transportation to travel to work, the following was observed: A family carer turns to his wife, who is a resident participant and, as they circle their hands around each other mimicking cycling, he says to her, “I got in an accident on my bicycle.” He laughs and leans in to her. She responds, “Oh we’re going really fast now” and they both laugh. She says “wooo!” and laughs as her husband speeds up his cycling motions.