ABSTRACT
In an article I wrote when I had just started researching the experience of dance for people with Parkinson’s (Houston 2011), I made the claim that studying Parkinsonian movement may bring to light the movement qualities that dancers with Parkinson’s display. The idea behind this move would be to enlarge our understanding of dance and who dances: “rather than merely seeing the variation in movement as the result of dysfunctional bodies, respecting and describing the poetry formed through dance by each participant-dancer may allow the documentation of unique movement narratives using tools from dance studies” (Houston 2011, 344). I was frustrated by the gap in literature to promote understanding of the art form of dance among the clinical studies investigating whether dancing acted as a tool to help people walk or balance better. These studies were laudable in their attempt to uncover the instrumental benefit in dancing (Hackney, Kantorovich, and Earhart 2007; Hackney and Earhart 2009, 2010), but this gap meant that we were still none the wiser in exploring the art form itself as seen within the context of community dance projects and programs for people with Parkinson’s. In fact, measuring people before and after dancing meant that there was the danger of not engaging much with the actual dance event itself.
