Why Dance Makes Brains Better

How an effort to help people with Parkinson's disease now helps everyone keep a healthier brain, mind, and body

- By Peggy La Cerra

Bathed in a romantic palette of light, shimmering tree branches rhythmically sway to a vibrant movement of Handel's L'Allegro, mesmerizing the audience at the Luminato Festival in Toronto. The branches are, in fact, the outstretched limbs of fifth and sixth graders from the Nelson Mandela Park Public School and Winchester Public School intertwined with the limbs of elder members of Dancing with Parkinson's Canada. The combined troupe is known as L'Allegro Movement Project.

One of the elderly dancers describes herself as “old and cranky and creaky—and all the rest of it [that goes with Parkinson’s],” but she says this while grinning from ear to ear. Another elderly dancer recounts the “number of times I have this kind of epiphany where, at the end of the class, I catch myself doing something that I didn’t think I could really do. And yet, just the shared experience of other people moving around—and, I think, primarily the music—just makes things possible that were difficult just ten minutes before.”

These 50 dancers have come together to express John Milton’s poetic masterwork in movement—and the result is beautiful. It also turns out to be a powerful demonstration of the ability of dance to improve not just movement, but also memory and the ability to learn in both young and old.

THE START OF A MOVEMENT