They used to say Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire because she did it backwards and in high heels. So what happens when you add Parkinson’s to the mix? Great things, apparently.
“Oh come ON, Boudicca! Everyone else has got LOVELY first positions!”
How I felt for this little girl in my daughter’s ballet class. Some 30+ years earlier I was the awkward child in the leotard and cardigan who counted to nine when everyone else had turned round at 8 steps. My mother crafted beautiful outfits – a snowflake, a flower fairy and a Czech peasant girl – but none could disguise the fact that I was rubbish at ballet. I would happily have traded places with Billy Elliot.
On my way home from ballet on a Saturday morning, I used to pass my friend Pamela coming back from her piano lessons. How I longed to be tickling the ivories rather than wrestling with entrechats and arabesques. Much later on, Pamela told me she had been very unhappy with piano lessons and would have loved to have been in my ill-fitting ballet shoes.
It didn’t help that I was already 5ft 8in with size 7 shoes by the age of ten. So it was a big relief when I started secondary school and was picked to play hockey on Saturday mornings. At last I could wave goodbye to the Sylvan School of Dancing and use my size and presence to fill up the goalmouth and terrify the opposition. I saved a lot of goals, but my dancing has never improved.
Swing dance
Six years ago, when my daughter said she had booked The Gershwin Gang for her wedding party, Robin and I thought it would be a good idea to get into some kind of shape so that we didn’t embarrass her and her new husband with mum-and-dad dancing.
We signed up for swing dance lessons. The music was great, and we marvelled at the moves of others. I understood the instructions, but I couldn’t translate them into footwork. This was four years before my Parkinson’s diagnosis and with hindsight, I was probably already showing symptoms of ‘Brain-says-go-feet-say-no’.
We did put together a passable bunch of moves for the big day. But then I was pretty much too exhausted to hit the dance floor. I was in the early stages of pneumonia, which I’d picked up on WheezyJet three days earlier.
Tango, anyone?
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d have given up on dancing? But then I picked up Kate Swindlehurst’s The Tango Effect – Parkinson’s and the healing power of dance. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 54, Kate was determined, as many of us are, to pursue the activity she loved doing and not give up just because a few brain cells were misbehaving.
It was a pursuit that took her on an epic adventure to dance in the milongas of Buenos Aires, the epicentre of Argentine tango.
It wasn’t easy – tango calls for a straight spine, while Parkinson’s will drag you into a stoop at the first sign of fatigue. She says:
“Standing tall, head up, chest open, was the last thing I felt like doing.”
But:
“Somehow, in its ability to persuade the damaged brain to work as if it were undamaged, tango overrides whatever it is that stops me moving. It returns a sense of grace to my limbs; it unfreezes me, giving me not only confidence but courage.”
Worth a try
Well it’s worth a try, isn’t it? So imagine my delight at the news that I may be able to do just that come the autumn.
Susie Tate is a dance educator who has brought her classical dance skills to healthcare. One of her many projects is based in my local trust, North Cumbria Integrated Care. About Being is a ten-week dance program for people who have had a stroke. She says:
“The aim of the work is to offer a space for people who have had a stroke to come together to explore, create, socialise and take part in exercise that can support their physiotherapy programmes. In all, it is a project where the participants take ownership of their recovery.”
Now Susie is planning another project to bring Argentine tango to people with Parkinson’s in North Cumbria.
Play > Let’s face the music and dance > Irving Berlin > Performed by the Gershwin Gang
There may be trouble ahead… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Image by angelo rossi from Pixabay
2 Comments
Di Tulloch · 10 May 2021 at 9:40 pm
Another piece of inspirational writing. This piece sent me on a wonderful trip down memory lane. I was transported back to 1959 with my little four year old legs dangling from a chair as i was fitted with a pair of soft, pink ballet shoes. I recalled the pink, cross-over cardigan my mother knitted for me to wear over the while ballet tunic. How i loved the outfit, especially the shoes but sadly, i did not grow to love ballet at all! I regret never learning to play the piano and actually hope one day i might learn with our granddaughter. I did get the chance to tinkle the ivories when my ballet days were over but that too, was short lived. My piano teacher was a tiny, white haired lady who shouted! Your mention of piano lessons took me right back to her lounge – I could almost feel my hands gripping the heavy tapestry cover of her piano stool – gripping tightly whilst she shouted. It really didn’t seem to matter what i did or didn’t do she just shouted. I can’t remember how those lessons came to an end but end they did. I thoroughly enjoy all your parky tracks articles. I have read them with interest and found them thought provoking and sometimes quite profound, To date “Let’s face the music and dance’ is my favourite. I have no doubt you will be giving the Argentine tango a good go.
One step forward, two steps back - ParkyTracks · 18 December 2021 at 8:52 am
[…] Activities – Nordic walking, Kickboxercise, running, table tennis, Argentine tango […]