Dance for PD, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Switch2Move, in partnership with Dutch National Opera & Ballet, present a | Forum & Professional Development Workshop Friday, 22 November - Sunday, 24 November 2019 Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam, NL This forum and workshop are open to teaching artists who have completed training in facilitating dance experiences for people living with Parkinson's or other specific health challenges, including Dance for PD®, Switch2Move, or Dance for Health, or have at least 2 years of experience leading classes for special populations. We invite you to register at the link below! | Learn | Connect | Share | Dance ► Be part of a conversation around shared standards and benchmarking
► Hone your skills and expand your creative toolkit
► Exchange activities and exercises with other Dance for Parkinson's and dance for health teaching artists
► Share class challenges and potential resolutions
► Infuse your teaching practice with new ideas "The workshop provides new ideas, but it also reminds me of what I already know and encourages me to continue to revamp, add to, take on, varied ideas presented in the workshop that will enrich my Parkinson's dancers experience."—Brooklyn Advanced workshop participant "This inspiring workshop addressed the challenges of meeting the diversity of PD dancers and coming up with ideas to facilitate partner work in class."
—Brooklyn Advanced workshop participant | | 2+ days of learning, moving and conversation |  Courtesy of People Dancing (photo by Rachel Cherry) | Switch2Move founder and director Andrew Greenwood and Dance for PD founding teacher and program director David Leventhal will join forces to facilitate two-and-a-half days of stimulating conversation, wide-ranging exploration and focused professional development. | About the Forum (Friday): Shared Values, Shared Standards: A Way Forward We are on the verge of significant growth in the integration of dance-based programming in healthcare. Governments, insurance companies and medical institutions are turning to the arts for partnership and collaboration, and social prescribing is gaining greater acceptance. In response to these changes, we, the dance community, must position ourselves strategically. How do we, as dance facilitators, ensure that the 'active ingredients' of our art form are consistently, safely and effectively shared with our participants? Are there universal benchmarks or standards that all teaching artists and arts in health practitioners should incorporate in their practice so that we can work more effectively with our partners in medicine, insurance and government, and best serve our communities? Andrew and David will moderate this vital community conversation and 'think tank'. Participation in this forum is optional - please indicate your interest on the registration form. About the Workshop (Saturday/Sunday) Using some of the key elements of Friday's discussion as inspiration, Andrew and David will facilitate a series of interactive sessions that explore the art and advanced craft of Parkinson's dance teaching and build on content covered in introductory training. This workshop will focus on creative approaches to content by exploring the interaction between structured/choreographed activities and open-ended co-creative activities that allow participants a critical voice in the creative process. We'll also dive into a repertory practicum in which you'll create a translated version of a contemporary work. A network meeting will allow you to discuss topics of most importance to you and to connect with those who share your interests. This workshop is worth 20 credits in the Dance for PD training system, and helps qualified teachers earn credits toward eligibility for certification. To learn more about Dance for PD's complete four-step training program, please click here or download our Training Guide. | Time and location Sessions will take place on Friday, 22 November, Saturday, 23 November and Sunday, 24 November at Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Waterlooplein 22, Amsterdam, NL. Schedule Friday, 22 November
18.00-20.30 Forum: Shared Values, Shared Standards: A Way Forward Saturday, 23 November
09:30-17.00 Professional Development sessions Sunday, 24 November
09.30-17.00p Community class, conversation and Professional Development sessions Workshop Tuition Standard rate: €260
Dance for PD Member or current/former Dance for Health teacher rate: €235 You'll also be able to add Dance for PD instructional media and music CDs to your order when you register. Please note that registrations will be quoted and billed in US dollars based on current exchange rates. | Questions? For questions about eligibility or workshop content, please email admin@danceforpd.org. | Professional Development Workshop Reviews "Learning from each other and our shared experiences was wonderful.”—Dance for PD Advanced Workshop participant 2015 "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 2015 "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 2015 | | Facilitators for this workshop | 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 authored chapters about dance and Parkinson's in 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, Peking Union Medical College Hospital (China) and Saitama Arts Foundation (Japan), 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. Leventhal designed and currently teaches pioneering dance-based elective courses that is part of the Narrative Medicine curriculum at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and 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. | Andrew Greenwood thrives on educating, motivating and inspiring people to understand the value and the relationship between the body, movement and life. As a dancer, choreographer and artistic director, Andrew aims to change peoples’ lives by developing specific movement programs for people with physical and mental impairment, such as Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis. In 2015, he co-founded Dance for Health in the Netherlands, as well as international affiliates in Italy and Australia. He has on-going collaborations with the Dutch National Opera & Ballet and Medical University the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to conduct medical research on the results of a specific movement program for sufferers of Multiple Sclerosis. Andrew was a performing artist with London Festival Ballet, Deutschen Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf, Kölner Oper-Tanzforum, among others, as well as Ballet Master with such companies as National Ballet of Portugal, Stuttgart Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Ballet National Theatre Belgrade, Serbia, Volksoper Wien, Vienna, Austria Ballet, Ballet Cisne Negro, São Paulo, Brazil, Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet, Ljubljana, Ballet Rambert Company, London. | 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. | At Switch2Move, we believe that the arts, and dance in particular, can contribute to people’s well-being and we have created a platform called Physical Sense that selectively integrates elements from these fields. We believe every person can explore, unleash and enhance their individual potential to live a healthy and meaningful life. Our approach to health agrees the condition that health is not the lack of disease but we take in account the statement of World Health Organisation as a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing. This is something we all have right to bring to our selves and the others being diagnosed with a “disease” or not. Switch2Move's founder Andrew Greenwood has created specific movement programs for Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Care Homes for the elderly and mentally and physical impaired with the goal of helping restore body/mind balance, and tackle health issues. In a climate where governments, health organizations and health insurances are looking for answers to global epidemics such as sedentary lifestyle, stress related diseases, Switch2Move sees dance in all its multiple facets having a significant role to play in the health and wellness of individuals, communities and the general public. | |
