Dance Anyway: Changing the Views of Aging and Wellbeing

Photo by Bo Peng on Unsplash

It’s everywhere, the obsession with aging well; in advertisements, in subconscious preferences and in being ‘healthy’ in both brain and body. Most narratives will tell us that aging well is the equivalent of better-than-average body mass, cognitive scores and having a longer life expectancy, but what contributes to aging psychologically? Dance is frequently an activity taken up by those in older age, at first glance it’s a hobby, but upon further inspection, it’s a pastime that’s rife with psychological and physical benefits. It goes deeper than physical movement; dance is a proprietor of connection, identity and joy as well as memory improvement and physical health.

The real crisis of aging may not be decline, but disconnection. A recent global scoping review, by Waugh and colleagues, examined how the use of dance improves health and wellbeing of older adults. At first glance, it looks like a clinical evaluation of dance programmes, but at a closer level, it reveals how people think about health, embodiment, purpose and aging itself.

Dance itself is highly recommended for wellbeing; it’s physically safe compare to other exercise and provides more consistent physical benefits such as endurance, muscle strength and physical functioning. It offers several psychosocial benefits, improving mood, quality of life and overall emotional wellbeing and offers a great potential for improved cognitive and brain health. Some of the most important information from this research is the reality of who reportedly benefited the most; if a doctor recommended an older adult attends a dance program, they are going to have a significantly different emotional experience to a person who has chosen the discipline because it holds meaning for them.

The controversial pattern in this research is that less than 40% of health assessments showed statistically positive change, but dance was repeatedly described as meaningful, safe and adaptable. A gap is formed between the statistical impact and the subjective experienced significance, posing the question; is health just a measurable construct, or does it include how it is felt and embodied? Dance resists reduction to step counts and lab scores; it required presence, rhythm, shared gaze and embodied emotion. If more classic exercise looks better on paper but brings less enjoyment, is that something we should prioritise? Is the difference between aging well and aging healthily larger than originally thought?

Unlike the limitations of research, dance is not a single intervention, it’s a constellation of human practices that cannot be measured in one single way. In attempting to standardise dynamic arts into medical models, through health science, it loses the human essence and ignores their transformative qualities. Where dance changes between people, through music variety, the space and individual moment of experience, rigid categorisation may simply strip away the essence that makes dance significant. Health may be inseparable from experience.

Aging is universal but the experience differs vastly between cultures, classes and communities. A dance program that thrives in a suburban community centre may appear entirely different to one from a rural village or urban neighbourhood with different resources. There is a blind spot in humanity’s collective imagination about what aging could be, it is impossible to limit it to just measurable metrics when some things cannot be measured; reclamation of body, rhythm and play. If we demand perfection in evidence before the fluidity of the arts, we choose certainty of humanity.

It is not the case that dance cures everything, it’s not necessarily a miracle that reverses aging, but it does hold up a mirror; experiencing the arts is a rejection of metrics and control that offers release. Dance anyway. Not for therapy, measurement or compliance, but for the self.

Depth psychology would consider dance beyond the physical qualities of coordinated movement, as a symbolic enactment. The body becomes the vessel for memory, identity, grief and unfinished themes can find expression without the need for spoken language. In later life, after retirement, when partners are lost and the future feels shorter, the psyche is still working and seeks integration. Dance provides a ritualised space where opposites may meet; strength and fragility, discipline and play, autonomy and connection. Rhythm both regulates the nervous system and reconnects the individual to something archetypal: the human experience of moving in synchrony with others. Dance activates both the personal and collective unconscious, awakening embodied memory and restoring a sense of belonging in creating a community.

Dance may surface that which has been exiled, the shy or sensual or competitive part. The grieving part. Movement bypasses the internal censor, inviting shadow material into conscious participation rather than suppression. For many older adults whose identities have been long formed over decades of responsibilities and restraint, embodying a sort of permission can be liberating, integrative. The dance floor transforms into a contained and safe psychological space where vitality may be rediscovered with age.

For the full review, published in PLoS ONE, 2024 find the link here: The use of dance to improve the health and wellbeing of older adults: A global scoping review of research trials | PLOS One

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