As a recovering chronically late person, I always try to get to places early. The cold hot sweats of panic as you rush to a meeting, or the blast of cold air on your dripping wet hair late for a lecture because you sat on the toilet too long staring into space (a staple of my uni days) is a feeling I loathe to feel again. In short, I don’t enjoy being late.
Now, I seem to have swung the pendulum the opposite way, accidentally arriving an hour early to Dr Peter Lovatt’s Boogie on the Brain event at The Halls in Norwich. Sitting outside in the freezing cold waiting for someone, anyone to go in first so you don’t smash through some unknown social expectation of timekeeping.
Even with how early I was, somehow I still wasn’t prepared. Boogie on the Brain was filled with dance, something that my nigh-hobnail boots and tight jeans clearly hadn’t anticipated nor were ready for. Add that to the careless mistakes tally. Still, even if I wasn’t prepared, it never felt like a barrier. Dr Peter Lovatt’s facilitation style was very accessible, and at no point did I feel uncomfortable dancing in a room full of strangers. Of course we weren’t there just to dance, but to follow along with Lovatt, investigating the power that dance and movement has on the human mind.
Each section explored a different area of research into dance and the mind, and each rendition involved a new dance or ‘jig’ to learn and do together. By the end of the night, almost everyone in the audience was up and moving. To begin with, Lovatt spoke about the psychology of dance, peeling through different case studies and research. We first focused on the effects of tango dancing on those suffering with Parkinson’s disease. On top of dealing with a variety of physical symptoms, those with Parkinsons also suffered with higher rates of loneliness, problem solving and executive dysfunction issues and depression, yet through the structure and expressive study of the steps of tango- these people’s mental and psychological health improved.
Without this pressing mental weight, patients’ physical symptoms began to lessen. This idea of mental impact on the physical was reflected in an earlier talk that day on dementia, and that engagement in society, passions and the arts can all help slowdown the need for more intensive care in dementia patients. An interesting moment of accidental serendipity.
Further and further into the talk more research was explored, how dance increases productivity, how babies can learn movement before even language, its ability to aid in education and problem solving and much more. It’s clear that with each study, each personal anecdote, that a conclusion was coming to the forefront. That movement and dance are powerful tools for change. This isn’t really new to artists. Even if we don’t have reems of statistics and papers, our own lived anecdotal experience tells us this is true. The real value of these conclusions comes when attempting to apply movement as a tool in non-artistic settings like healthcare and community outreach. The true barrier against its more widespread use isn;t that it is ineffective, but that there is a barrier of inhibition in the way.
During his talk, Lovatt stated his belief that inhibition is simply a ‘social construct’. Movement and dance are baked into our brains and DNA from childhood and that inhibition from expression, from joy and art is reliant on a thinly veiled film of social expectation. We must break through this, not just simply on a personal level to allow us to express ourselves but on a wider cultural level to allow those in need to access potentially life-changing forms of care and support.
Every study added to his burgeoning conclusion. When this veil is passed through, we can see the positive effects. Not just anecdotal but physical, hormonal, quantifiable results.
Arts organisations are out there using movement and dance to bring social and personal change- the first step is complete. Now, we simply have to keep in lockstep to that beat, and find how we can utilise this tool in our own communities and health, therapeutic and social institutions.
There is so much more to say on this topic, but all in all, it’s clear from Lovatt’s work and the various other studies work, that dance as an art form is a powerful tool and we, as he put it ‘should have dance in every healthcare centre’.
Written by Ben Treadaway
YNA COLLECTIVE 