Walking the walk

>> Dancer and movement therapist Joanabbey
Sack helps Parkinson’s patients feel closer to freedom, one step at a time

ENCOURAGING MOVEMENT: Sack

by MARITES CARINO

In a mirrored room, an animated group of older women rehearse strong, deliberate marching steps. They initiate movement from their lower body, and slowly lift their legs from their hips and not their feet. Deep in concentration, occasionally one of them slips up and ends speedily tiptoeing forward and someone blurts out laughing, “We should do a dance called the Parkinson’s shuffle!”

Every seven days, these die-hard students share movement and humour in Moving and Dancing, a pilot dance course offered to people with Parkinson’s by the Association Récréative Milton-Parc and the Parkinson’s Society of Quebec.

Joanabbey Sack, dancer and movement therapist, leads the class that incorporates dance and helps develop flexibility, coordination and balance—functions affected in the progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects an estimated 100,000 Canadians.

“They all feel like they can be identified by their walk,” says Sack, who started teaching the class in September. “Having a movement disorder is going to limit one’s movement repertoire because you’re protecting yourself. You’re hiding it. My goal is that they walk out of here feeling like they want to walk.”

Through her weekly class—whose current age range is 48–75—Sack strives to encourage the joy of movement and dance because she explains, “people with neurologically based syndromes have little instinct or opportunity to improvise and enjoy movement.” In fact, Sack started teaching the class because a close friend, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, along with a few others, wanted a dance class that catered to their needs. At the time, it didn’t exist, so they decided to launch one.

The students rarely miss the hour-long session that takes place in a dance rehearsal space, a venue specifically chosen for its ambiance. “I absolutely wanted it in a studio, and not in a gym,” says Sack. “I think they really need to have the atmosphere of an arts-based space that isn’t medicalized, since their lives have become very medicalized,” she explains.

The class begins with chair-based exercises then progresses to standing moving sequences and concludes with movement improvisation. Besides sharing a love for movement, Sack says it builds a network where students can chat about their symptoms, medications and doctors in an artistic environment.

Although Sack has been working as a dance therapist for 25 years, she says, “It’s fun for me to do a straight dance class. It’s not therapy. It’s dance.”

For more information about the class, which starts its second session this month, call (514) 872-0566