Dancing amid neurodegeneration

Dance health is a fast-developing field of practice and research concerned with how dance can support health among general populations and individuals with specific health conditions, particularly neurodegenerative diseases. Although dance health practice is often dance-centred, research in the field remains largely disease-centred, dominated by positivist biomedical paradigms that evaluate the instrumental value of dance for health through clinical assessments.

In response, this project led by Emily Davis adopts a dance-centred approach to understanding dancing with neurodegenerative illness, including drawing on dance itself as a means of knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination. In doing so, rather than positioning dance as a health intervention, dance is examined as a social practice, attending to the social, cultural, and environmental forces that shape and situate dance health experiences, impacts, and inequities. Taken together, this work considers dance as a mode of ‘knowing’ and ‘promoting’ health amid neurodegeneration.