I can hardly believe I am reading this sentence:
"The challenge now is to find out what kind of dance may help people with Parkinson's."
Well, doc, maybe you like Sinatra and I don't.
The music you should dance to is WHATEVER TURNS YOU ON BABY.
I mean, are PWP really that different from everybody else that we can't rely on them to choose music that makes them want to tap their feet, move their bodies, forget the Off times for awhile and feel really On; emotionally and physical turned on.
At the beginning, choose music that speaks to you and for you and of you, and GET IT ON BABY. Later you can try other music.
Me, I started with the Blues, on the advice of John Lee Hooker (The Blues is a healer, it healed me, it can heal you if you let it.)
Now I am listening to Mongolian throat music. Dancing and singing it.
I wore earphones and listened to music all day everyday for four years, trying to use the part of the brain that handles dance and music. It does not make me live longer but it helps me to live at a higher level of spirit - dance and music help raise me up from a situation that is not liveable unless I can rise above it.
There are thousands of PWP dancing, and they would be the ones who should be tracked.
I know one nursing home for PWP where they stopped the music and the dancing, because when they put on a romantic song from the war years, men who had been in the war broke down and cried.
And that was disruptive behaviour. Swallow your pill, sit in the chair and stare at the wall. Easier to manage.
That will come to all of us soon enough. ln the meantime, let's get it on. PD wants to disconnect your body from your brain; dancing says STFU and dance.