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Instructor: Lucy Bowen McCauley
Location: Studio F at the REACH

Instructor: Lucy Bowen McCauley
Location: Studio F at the REACH

Instructor: Lucy Bowen McCauley
Location: Studio F at the REACH

Absolutely! Our teaching artists are specially trained to include people at all levels of ability and mobility, including individuals using wheelchairs, walkers, or other assistive devices. We invite you to participate in any way that is available to you in the moment, and our teachers will help translate material so that it is accessible and enjoyable.

Many persons with PD come by themselves. However, you are invited to ask a spouse/partner, friend, or family member to participate in class with you if you feel that would make your experience more enjoyable. Often, participants in the class help one another, holding hands, for instance, while dancing across the floor. Many Dance for PD® classes also engage volunteers and assistants from the community to provide extra hands and eyes. In a Dance for PD® class, everyone is attentive and everyone helps to the extent they can. The connections made between and among persons in a Dance for PD® class is often noted as one of many reasons persons like the classes and gain a positive feeling from them. Please be sure to register for the total number in your party when you sign up for class.

Dance for PD® classes offered in tandem with Mark Morris Dance Group performance residencies are led by specially trained teaching artists from the performing company. These artists have extensive training and experience leading Dance for PD classes and participate in on-going professional development to strengthen their skills. They have all completed a minimum of 30 hours of specialized training in addition to any general teacher training they’ve had as part of their dance education.

No permission is required. However, Dance for PD classes do qualify as physical exercise. If you have specific concerns related to physical exertion, please check in with your physician before you participate.

Based on positive anecdotal evidence from their patients and scientific data from more than 38 peer-reviewed research studies on the benefits of dance for people with Parkinson's, many neurologists around the world now regularly refer their patients to Dance for PD classes.

If you would have never danced before and want to try, a Dance for PD® class is for you. There are no requirements whatsoever to join a Dance for PD® class, only the desire to dance. Persons dance with walkers, with wheelchairs, and on their own in Dance for PD® classes. Often to everyone’s surprise, including the person in a wheelchair, he or she stands up and dances, with or without assistance.

Chairs should always be available for persons. If someone gets tired, a dance leader, assistant, or caregiver brings over a chair, or the person who is tired walks to one nearby with someone to assist if need be.

Dance for PD leaders remind everyone in class that they should adapt anything in the class that seems too challenging. Caregivers and aides of persons with balance problems dance nearby to help if need be, by holding hands, bringing over a walker, helping someone to sit down. Dance leaders and their assistants in class get to know the students in their classes so that they can anticipate those who might need extra help with balance and offer help. Participants with balance problems who want to work at the barre may feel more comfortable dancing in-between two pieces of equipment so that they hold on to each barre with one hand. Or a chair might be the solution. Everyone pays attention to helping persons with balance problems do what they feel comfortable with, in a safe manner.

Dance is one of the most enjoyable of human activities. Persons with PD dance because it feels good. It’s fun. Initiating and sustaining sequences of movement does become much more difficult with PD. Persons with PD often discover ways that help them move, such as walking close to another person to feel or “catch” their pace, stepping over lines on the floor to start moving, listening to a rhythm while moving or thinking about a movement before and during the movement sequence. These same techniques enable persons with PD to dance. In fact, dancing is often easier for persons with PD than everyday movements. Very similar techniques enable dancers professionally trained in ballet and modern dance to perform movements that are very difficult to learn and execute. In Dance for PD® classes, persons with PD dance together with their dance leaders, using all these techniques.

To respect the intimate, communal environment of the class, everyone in the room is asked to participate in the experience. We do not allow observers.

Please check out the Dance for PD program website at or call their toll-free hotline
at 800-957-1046.