Time and location

The seminar will take place on Saturday, 11 January and Sunday, 12 January at Canada's National Ballet School, 400 Jarvis St, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Schedule

Saturday, 11 January
10:00a-6:00p Workshop sessions

Sunday, 12 January
10:00a-4:00p Workshop sessions

Workshop Tuition

Standard rate: US $165
Dance for PD Member rate: US $135

You'll also be able to add any of our popular and widely-used instructional DVDs and music CDs to your order when you register. In addition, you may participate in any part of the Dance for PD Introductory Workshop 9-10 January at no additional charge, space permitting.

Advanced Workshop Reviews

"Learning from each other and our shared experiences was wonderful.”—Dance for PD Advanced Workshop participant

"I particularly appreciated the breakdowns and explanations given by both teachers and participants as to tips and sequences they have found helpful for actually teaching material to dancers with PD.”—Dance for PD Advanced Workshop participant

"I made some good contacts that will be very helpful in our own work. Having the opportunity to share material we developed in our own class, and to get such a positive response from fellow participants, added an extra dimension.”—Dance for PD Advanced Workshop participant

David Leventhal is a founding teacher and Program Director for Dance for PD®, a program of the Mark Morris Dance Group that has now been used as a model for classes in more than 300 communities in 25 countries. He leads classes for people with Parkinson's disease around the world and trains other teachers in the Dance for PD® approach around the world. He's co-produced three volumes of a successful At Home DVD series for the program and has been instrumental in initiating and designing innovative projects involving live streaming and Moving Through Glass, a dance-based Google Glass App for people with Parkinson's. He received the 2018 Martha Hill Mid-Career Artist Award, the 2016 World Parkinson Congress Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Parkinson's Community and was a co-recipient of the 2013 Alan Bonander Humanitarian Award from the Parkinson's Unity Walk. Leventhal has written about dance and Parkinson's for such publications as Dance Gazette and Room 217, and has a chapters about the program in two recently published books: Moving Ideas: Multimodal Learning in Communities and Schools (Peter Lang), and Creating Dance: A Traveler's Guide (Hampton Press). He is in demand as a speaker at international conferences and symposiums, and has spoken about the intersection of dance, Parkinson's and health at the Lincoln Center Global Exchange, Edinburgh International Culture Summit, University of Michigan, Rutgers, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Brown, Stanford, Columbia, Georgetown, Tufts, and Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (Belgium), among others. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Davis Phinney Foundation, and is a member of the Advisory Council for the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center Arts & Humanities program. He was a 2016 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training mentor. Leventhal designed and currently teaches pioneering dance-based elective courses that are part of the Narrative Medicine curricula at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the NYU School of Medicine. He's featured in the award-winning 2014 documentary Capturing Grace directed by Dave Iverson. As a dancer, he performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1997-2011, appearing in principal roles in Mark Morris' The Hard Nut, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare. Leventhal received a 2010 Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for his performing career with Mark Morris. He graduated from Brown University with honors in English Literature.

Sarah Robichaud is the first Dance for PD® Certified Teacher in Canada. Sarah is a classically trained dancer, author, entrepreneur, and charismatic leader, who has been recognized as a force for purposeful and impactful change as the founder and executive director of the registered charity ‘Dancing with Parkinson’s.’ Sarah studied and performed extensively throughout Canada, Europe and Moscow where she trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School, and has performed and choreographed for many theatre, film and television projects over the last 20 years. Sarah’s interest in Parkinson’s Disease began in the spring of 2007 when her client Andy Barrie (formerly of CBC Metro Morning) asked for help managing his physical PD symptoms through exercise. Sarah learned about the innovative PD dance class being offered by Dance for PD and went to New York to take part in their first teacher training program. Sarah was immediately inspired to offer DWP dance classes in Toronto starting in 2008 and thus Dancing with Parkinson’s Canada was born. DWP now offers classes in over 15 locations throughout the Greater Toronto Area. Sarah’s passion for helping other connect and express through dance prompted her to launch her most recent initiative, a groundbreaking dance and arts program focused on addressing mental health challenges of First Nations peoples in Pikangikum, a struggling community with the world’s highest suicide rate.

About Dance for PD®

The Mark Morris Dance Group's award-winning Dance for PD® program invites people with Parkinson's and their families in more than 300 communities and 25 countries around the globe to experience the joys and benefits of dance while creatively addressing symptom-specific concerns related to balance, cognition, motor skill, depression and physical confidence. Through its innovative, internationally-replicated classes, acclaimed teacher training program, and high quality media resources, Dance for PD​'s fundamental working principle is that professionally-trained dancers are movement experts whose knowledge about balance, sequencing, rhythm and aesthetic awareness is useful to persons with PD. In class, teaching artists integrate movement from modern, ballet, tap, folk and social dancing, and choreographic repertory to engage participants' minds and bodies and create an enjoyable, social environment for artistic exploration.​​ Dance for PD has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, Dance Magazine, The Guardian and hundreds of other publications,​and has been honored by several local, national and international awards, including the Parkinson Awareness Award, Alan Bonander Humanitarian Award, and the Sapolin Public Service Award from the New York City Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. Peer-reviewed research from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Germany suggests that dance provides a range of benefits, including improved walking and short-term mobility, enhanced quality of life and self-efficacy, and improvements in mood and social inclusion among people with Parkinson's. Dance for PD, which began in 2001 as a collaboration between MMDG and Brooklyn Parkinson Group, leverages technology—live streaming, a popular instructional At Home DVD series, and an experimental App for Google Glass—to make the program more available to its diverse and expanding network of constituents around the globe. The program actively pursues research opportunities with top academic centers including Columbia University, Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University, and Syracuse University.

In Toronto, Dance for PD partners closely with Dancing with Parkinson's and with Canada's National Ballet School to present training opportunities and foster other collaborative initiatives.

About Dance for Parkinson's Network Canada

The DFPNC—a consortium of partners including Canada’s National Ballet School, Dance for PD®, Dancing with Parkinson’s Canada, and Parkinson Canada is committed to:
* Improving accessibility to dance programs for people living with PD
* For the PD community: Improving access to classes and resources, regardless of physical mobility or geographic location
* For dance instructors: Increasing training opportunities and professional development resources for program delivery
* Expanding program offering and classes in communities across Canada

For all inquiries about the Network, please contact Angie Seto, Manager, Community Dance Programs for Seniors, at Canada’s National Ballet School. She can be reached via email at aseto@nbs-enb.ca or by phone at 416-964-3780.