We are all dancers!

PD Dance Dance for PD Japan

About PD dance

PD Dance is a dance activity by people with Parkinson’s disease, and is a unique name created by Fukuoka-based members that combines two PDs, “Perfect Dance” and “Parkinson’s disease. Based on “Dance for PD® 2001 – N.Y.,” which is currently spreading around the world, the activity started in Japan in 2016 as “Dance for PD Japan Perfect Dance. The company has developed its own method based on the idea that balancing medication with some kind of activity is effective in improving QOL (quality of life). There is a growing body of evidence that dance has a positive effect on the brain, body, and mind.

About Project

Collaboration

PD Dance is a project commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and implemented since 2019 by Paracadance, a general incorporated association, in collaboration with Fukuoka University Hospital and SUNWELS CO.,LTD. which operates PD House, a specialized Parkinson’s disease home nationwide. In this project, Professor Yoshio Tsuboi, MD, PhD, Neurology, Fukuoka University, has been invited to assess how dance activities can create benefits and impact for patients with Parkinson’s disease, an intractable disease.

Members

This initiative began when Manizia, a dance artist living in Fukuoka, asked Professor Tsuboi of Fukuoka University Hospital for her cooperation in starting “Dance for PD®” activities in Japan, which she had learned overseas. Subsequently, Paracadance took on the management of the program, which was commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Just around that time, a new home specializing in Parkinson’s disease, “PD House,” was established in Fukuoka, and we have been conducting dance activities in the facility since its opening. This project is made possible by the cooperation of many enthusiastic people, including PD House staff, members of the Neurology Department of Fukuoka University Hospital, arts management specialists, local dancers, and their families.

Researcher: Yoshio Tsuboi

Graduated from Chiba University School of Medicine in 1986. After studying at the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. for three years from 2000, he rejoined the Department of Neurology at Fukuoka University, where he has been a professor since October 2011. In addition to his clinical and research work in the field of neurology, specializing in movement disorders, especially Parkinson’s disease, he also engages in social activities through his advisory activities to the Friends of the Department of Parkinson disease.

Facilitator: Manizia

Since appearing in a dance piece by 15 pregnant women in New York (1989) at the last month of pregnancy, she has been developing multi-generational dances from babies to the elderly with the theme of “diversity” in Japan and abroad. She completed a Parkinson’s Dance Instructor Training Course with the Mark Maurice Dance Group in New York and formed “Dance for PD Japan” in Fukuoka in 2016.

Management: Kaori Nonaka

After graduating from high school, she started to learn dancing while working as a show dancer with no dance training before. After leaving the company, Encountered to diverse expressions, completed a community dance facilitator training course in 2016. Fascinated by dance as a state of life that transcends all boundaries, And established the general incorporated association “Paracadance” in 2018 to exploring the possibilities of dance in the medical, welfare, and educational fields.