Integrating Citizenship, Embodiment, and Relationality: Towards a Reconceptualization of Dance and Dementia in Long-Term Care

J Law Med Ethics. 2018 Sep;46(3):717-723. doi: 10.1177/1073110518804233.

Abstract

Dance, as aesthetic self-expression, is a unique arts-based program that combines the physical benefits of exercise with psychosocial therapeutic benefits. While dance has also been shown to support empowerment, meaningful self-expression, and pleasurable experience, it is rarely adopted to support these aspects of engagement in the context of dementia care. The instrumental reduction of dance to its application as a therapeutic tool can be traced to the contemporary movement towards cognitive science with an emphasis on embodied cognition. This has effectively elided a consideration of how the body itself, separate and apart from cognition, could be a source of intelligibility, inventiveness, and creativity. We argue for the need to broaden the therapeutic model of dance to more fully support embodied and creative self-expression by persons living with dementia. To achieve this, we explore how a relational model of citizenship that recognizes corporeality and relationality as fundamental to human existence brings a new and critical dimension to understanding the importance of dance in the context of dementia. Drawing on this model, we articulate a new kind of ethic characterized by a pre-reflective intercorporeal sensibility that requires the mobilization of public structures and practices to cultivate a relational environment for individuals living with dementia that supports human flourishing.

MeSH terms

  • Dance Therapy*
  • Dementia / psychology
  • Dementia / therapy*
  • Humans
  • Long-Term Care