Culture and Health

Dance for Parkinson's Project Research

Commissioned by the English National Ballet in 2010 the study looks at the impact the experience of dancing has on persons affected with Parkinson’s. The study tracked the company’s programme Dance for Parkinson and its regional classes in Oxford and Liverpool, using a vast array of methods to examine the effects of dance on people with this degenerative neurological condition (participant observation, one-on-one multiple interviews, focus groups, participant diaries and film footage) and to investigate how dancing influences people socially and artistically in their everyday lives, how it changes their mobility, their sociability, their motivations to continue to dance.