Dance is a powerfully beneficial activity for people living with Parkinson’s Disease. Initially emerging into academic literature in the late 1980s, with a study comparing the impact of dance movement therapy and traditional exercise on the movement symptoms of people living with Parkinson’s Disease, this dance and health approach has inspired numerous studies offering a robust platform for the field. Despite popular awareness about the impact of dance for Parkinson’s Disease increasing, much is still unknown about the specificity of impacts for diverse communities and well as the mechanisms of how different dance forms support domains of brain health.

In today’s episode of Dancing into Brain Health, our guest is dancer/researcher Dr. Aline Haas whose passion for dance and health has spearheaded initiatives that are addressing just this. Together we will inquire, how can we ensure more of the benefits of dance can reach those outside of the global north? How can access to and research on dance and health be more equitable?

To learn more about Dr. Aline Haas, visit her website https://sites.google.com/view/personalpagealinehaas or follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aline-nogueira-haas-phd-2b4441287/

Instagram @alinehaas

Read some of Dr. Haas’s work:

Dr Haas’ ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4583-0668

Check out the Dança e Parkinson and follow them on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dancaeparkinson/

Learn more about Dr. Haas’s latest research on adapting Amazonian dance to support people living with Parkinson’s Disease here: https://www.gbhi.org/projects/promoting-brain-health-through-amazonian-dance

This episode of Dancing into Brain Health was edited and produced by Magda Kaczmarska and Hilary Brown-Istrefi. The music for this show is the title cut from the album, Critical Path by Joe Venegoni and Carl Weingarten.