Our next Thinking Spaces session, “Fidelity for the Irreplicable: Improvisation in Dance and Health Research” is presented by Rebecca Barnstaple, and takes place Wednesday, March 15 at 2pm ET. The talk includes a movement demonstration and takes place in-person in our brand new ImprovLab.

Register through our google form to attend!

More about the talk:

Improvisation is a core element of some interventions in the emerging fields of dance for health and dance therapy, which have shown potential to slow progress or diminish symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alheimer’s. IMPROVment® is a dance-based improvisational movement practice for brain-body health developed at Wake Forest University. It has been used in several research studies, including a recently completed RCT (2017 – 2020) and a just-launched 5-year RCT investigating dose and frequency effects of dance interventions for adults with subjective memory loss. This talk explores how tools related to improvisation can be adapted to a research-ready scientific protocol while preserving their integrity and magic – includes a demonstration.

More about the speaker:

Rebecca Barnstaple is the Manager of Community Programs and Engagement at Chigamik Community Health Centre in Midland, Ontario, a tri-cultural agency offering a range of services from Traditional Healing and social prescribing to mental health and primary care. Rebecca recently completed a PhD and Postdoctoral Fellowship at York University investigating the neurobiological effects of dance in health and disease and is adjunct faculty in the dance department. A graduate of the National Centre for Dance Therapy at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal (NCDT 2015), she offers dance-therapy based programs for people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Chronic Pain, and provides education and training in dance therapy and dance interventions for the NCDT, Dance for Health Nova Scotia, and IMPROVment (Wake Forest University, North Carolina).

Rebecca co-chairs the Certification and Accreditation committee of the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Canada (DMTAC) and serves on the Research and Practice committee of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), the Research Group of the NCDT, and the Dance for Health committee of the International Association of Dance Medicine Science (IADMS).