If ageing is seen as a gift of time to explore new experiences, the freedom to pursue dreams is blown wide open. It is often when people take the time to engage in creativity and connection through music and dance.
Shelagh D., who had been singing for pleasure most of her adult life, decided to study the cello after retiring from her profession as a specialist speech-language pathologist in 2020. “I wanted to play music with others. It’s about careful listening and responding to each other through the music.”
“When you play music, you’re inside it,” she explains.
“The cello is arguably one of the hardest instruments to play,” she adds, five years into learning it. “I never had to read the bass clef,” says the soprano. “With the cello, you feel the vibrations of the music as you play.”
Clara Shandler, an accomplished cellist and president of the non-profit East Vancouver Community Music School (EVCM), is also Shelagh’s teacher. She explains that EVCM is for “anybody and everybody who loves music.”
There are no auditions—just interested students who study with teachers of nearly all orchestral instruments, plus the guitar.
“Music brings people from all walks of life together. We make it fun. We are about nurturing that love of music.”
“Making music,” says Shelagh, “takes you right out of your ‘situations.’ It is calming and cathartic and has an intimate language. The experience recharges you.”
Adults new to music, Clara explains, can choose their own adventure and enjoy the journey rather than focus on a destination.
Ongoing scientific interest and peer-reviewed studies continue to explore the many positive effects of making, listening to, and dancing to music on the ageing brain and body.
Dancing is known to reduce stress, increase serotonin levels, and develop neural connections, specifically in areas related to executive functioning, long-term memory, and spatial recognition.
That is all in addition to the immediate benefit of socially connecting with others to have fun, as dancing usually happens in the company of others.
Vivian Lau, a line-dancing teacher in various Vancouver communities since 2009 and now a senior herself, says that while it is a good form of exercise that is not too strenuous, line-dancing is also known to improve balance while engaging the brain to memorise steps. “It can delay memory loss.”
Student Deborah B. says she did not want to continue her family’s tradition of being immobilised by arthritis.
The benefits of line-dancing include proprioception (the body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location), friendship, fitness, and improved memory.
“Fit seniors live longer, hurt less, and smile more,” says Deborah.
When she was looking for a way to keep moving and cope with the sadness she carries because of her husband’s declining health, Diane K. started line-dancing.
“Now I even welcome the soreness I feel in my feet after practice,” she adds, smiling.
Scientific research has been studying the complex mental coordination that dance requires and its positive effects on memory and brain health.
Cultivating body-mind coordination is beneficial, especially as we age.
Rosemary C. line-dances for mental stimulation and for exercise that is less strenuous and less likely to cause injury than other options.
A July 2008 Scientific American article, “So You Think You Can Dance?”, states that “while music stimulates the brain’s reward centres, dance activates its sensory and motor circuits.”
“It’s wonderful to be learning new things with other people,” says Paula A. “There is a sense of achievement.”
Social connection is as valuable as the learning.
Both musicians and dancers new to the experience agree that the further they progress, the more satisfying it becomes. “It keeps you moving forward,” says Shelagh.
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