A choreographer helps Parkinson’s patients regain their capacity for movement through dance.
Life, one might say, is a dance -- a choreography of steps graceful and gangly, clumsy and hesitant, breathtaking and bold. No one dances or hears life’s music in quite the same way.
Which is, in a way, why the Dance for Movement Disorders class exists at all. And why, above the music during these thrice-weekly classes, instructor and class founder Misty Owens periodically calls, “All variations accepted!”
Being granted such permission makes everyone smile. Her words seem to strengthen their resolve, to put a bit more determination into their steps that, an hour ago, were much more hesitant.
“The first time I walked in,” says Doris Sosnowski of Dallas, who has taken the class since it began in January 2012, “I felt normal again.”
Like most people in the class, she has Parkinson’s disease. Others have multiple sclerosis or other syndromes that cause them to tremble or freeze or have declining control of their movements.
In this wide-windowed, wood-floored studio at Texas Health Finley Ewing Cardiovascular & Fitness Centre Dallas, Owens helps them become free.
“Dancing improves their rhythm and timing, which are lost” with such diseases, Owens says. “It improves fluidity and balance. They rid themselves of rigidity. Their tremors fade away sometimes. Their capacity for movement changes.”
As class begins and everyone sits in folding chairs pulled into a circle, she reaches for her iPod, which she’s plugged into a sound dock on the floor next to her. She pushes a button; the first song is “I’ve Got the World on a String,” performed by Ella Fitzgerald. But that’s just today; each playlist is different, a unique combination of Big Band, doo-wop, Broadway classics, jazz standards, classical music, rock ‘n’ roll and international tunes.
Owens says she puts a lot of time into compiling each list, “finding the right tempos, dynamics, flow and quality for my dance combinations, and for the desired effect I look for in the movements of my dance students.”
Those last three words capture it all; these men and women aren’t patients to her: They’re students of dance.
“The core of my being revolves around dance, and that love comes through my efforts to inspire others to experience the joy and freedom of movement that means so much to me,” she says.
After only a few notes, give or take an arm lift and stretch, you see and sense and feel her passion. “Scoop, hands together, low,” Owens directs. “Dive into a higher space and lower to the floor. Cross your hands like you’re flying.”
Muscles start to warm up, and Owens stops the music for introductions. She begins, forming a large, elaborate “M” with her arm as she says her name. Everyone repeats it, then takes turns going around the circle with their own names and gestures. Vicky claps twice; one of the Jims kicks the air; the other waves his arms. Betty raises her arms and legs. Jim Rosenbloom started the class after having a problem with his rotator cuff. His doctor recommended surgery; Rosenbloom said he wanted to try exercise first.
“After a month and a half, I was fine,” says Rosenbloom, 68, who has had Parkinson’s for a decade. “I went to the doctor, and he said, ‘What have you been doing?’ If you do the right thing, it gives you hope. You see it working and know it isn’t just talk.”
An unexpected benefit of the class, he says, is that his handwriting has improved. “I think it’s because you learn body control so finely in these dances, so after a while it becomes second nature.”
Owens knows what it takes for everyone to be here. Parkinson’s isn’t just a matter of shaking. Seemingly simple movements zipping a zipper, tying a shoe involve a painstaking process. Patients must learn the intricacies of timing their meds and their meals to make them most efficient, she says.
“It’s not just zipping into the gym when you feel like it,” she says. “You lift one leg into the car, then reach down and lift the other one in.”
Owens grew up in Dallas and taught her first class at age 15 at London School of Dance, the East Dallas studio where she is now artistic director and that her mother has owned for 47 years. As class continues on this sunny Tuesday, the dancers move their feet in heel-toe repetitions as Mel Torme sings Games People Play. They extend their legs, flex their feet, bend at the waist. They shuffle as they sit, crossing their ankles, holding position. Owens leads; they all follow with seeming ease and grace. You can lose yourself in the choreography, the rhythm, the palpable comfort they all feel with what they’re doing, with one another and with her.
When she says, “OK, everybody, let’s go to the barre,” class member Joanna Evans, who is in her 60s and has a disorder that causes a muscle in her neck to twitch uncontrollably, says quietly, “This isn’t physical therapy. It’s emotional therapy.”
Owens was teaching at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn in 2002 when the company decided to start its Movement Disorders class and she was asked to be one of its founders. Before then, her only connection to Parkinson’s was from her childhood. A neighbour who was often outdoors went inside one day; from then on, she’d only catch glimpses of him through his front window. Only when he died did Owens learn he had Parkinson’s.
“Patients used to be told, ‘Sit down; you might fall.’ Now it’s, ‘Exercise every day and do different things,’” says Owens, whose experience inspired her to write her master’s thesis on using dance to manage symptoms of Parkinson’s. “I always had questions about him when I grew up. He was so opposite my world, someone not moving at all.”
Bobby Helms sings My Special Angel as Owens enthusiasm continues to enthrall: “Bend your knees. Your hips go right under you. Excellent job! Your balance is right on the money! There’s no pay, but you’re all hired.”
At this point, all but a few have released the barre as they do shuffle steps punctuated by the occasional ‘Woo!’”Oh, Jim,” Owens says to one student, “I love that you love to do that. A man after my own heart _ a man who likes to ‘Woo!’”
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