English National Ballet has been working with people with Parkinson’s since 2010 to offer them, their carers, friends and family members the opportunity to engage in dance activity in a professional dance studio with live music.
Through weekly classes held in London and regional partner venues, the Dance for Parkinson’s programme supports people with Parkinson’s to exercise, develop confidence, build strength, and potentially lessen the interference of symptoms on everyday life.
English National Ballet commissioned Dr Sara Houston and Ashley McGill from University of Roehampton to build on their previous research to measure, examine and assess the effects of dancing for people with Parkinson’s. Dance classes were hosted at Markova House, London plus four national projects in Oxford, Liverpool, Ipswich and Cardiff.
The research collected data to understand more about physical, psychological, social and emotional changes as a result of participating.
The results suggest that dance activity helps people with Parkinson’s to nurture an active lifestyle, physically and socially, encourages a feeling of capability aiding fluency of movement and decreased amount of freezing temporarily and helps people with Parkinson’s to stay motivated and maintain or improve other non-motor aspects of daily life.
Participants also consistently saw less interference of symptoms on everyday life and improved certainty about future life, including maintaining social relationships, having hope for the future, continuing to learn new things and developing self-confidence.
English National Ballet will present the findings from Dance for Parkinson’s: An Investigative Study 2, at the Evidence of Impact: Moving Forward symposium, which will be live-streamed in partnership with ArtStreamingTV.