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The Arts and Medicine
January 24/31, 2017

“Move Your Arm Like a Swan”: Dance for PD Demedicalizes Parkinson Disease

Author Affiliations
  • 1 Supervisor, Digital Content Operations, The JAMA Network, Chicago, Illinois
JAMA. 2017;317(4):342-343. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.21033

The physical symptoms of Parkinson disease (PD) can feel like entrapment. Slowness of movement, stiffness, loss of balance, and tremors make activities of daily living difficult to impossible, and people become isolated, their bodies an unpredictable, unresponsive burden.

Dance for PD®, a collaboration between the Brooklyn Parkinson Group and the world-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group, is working to lessen that burden. The program uses professional dancers in dance studios to work with PD patients to develop strategies for navigating the world through creative, expressive use of their bodies.

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