Moving Bodies Lab researcher Emily Davis has co-choreographed a performance piece with dancers with multiple sclerosis to be premiered as part of Healing Arts Scotland next week.
Over the last few months, Emily Davis, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Moving Bodies Lab, has been working closely with dancers with multiple sclerosis (MS) in Scottish Ballet’s Elevate® programme to co-choreograph a performance piece about living and dancing with MS. The piece will premiere next week, on Friday, 19 June, in Glasgow as part of Healing Arts Scotland.
The piece is based on Emily’s PhD research conducted with these dancers with MS about their experiences in the Elevate® programme. While most research flattens understanding of embodied experiences to text, Emily’s PhD research used dance as a method for generating new knowledge about the experience of dancing with MS. Now, building on this work, Emily and the dancers have worked together to choreograph these findings into a live dance performance for Healing Arts Scotland: Glasgow Day.
Healing Arts is the Jameel Arts & Health Lab’s global outreach campaign in collaboration with the World Health Organization, with Healing Arts Scotland a biennial celebration of the role of the arts to improve health and wellbeing.
First launched in partnership with Scottish Ballet in 2024, Healing Arts returns to Scotland from 15 to 19 of June. The live performance will be part of the Healing Arts Scotland: Glasgow Day at City Halls. You can see the line-up of speakers and purchase tickets on their website.
Emily and the dancers are excited to have the opportunity to harness the power of dance as a novel means of knowledge translation to communicate lived experiences of MS to audiences across the arts and health. Emily would like to acknowledge the generous support of Scottish Ballet, the Moving Bodies Lab, and the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities in the process. We hope to see you there.
