We will be examining the therapeutic effectiveness of a wheelchair ballroom/Latin dancing program that will take place for six weeks, from July 16th to August 24th. The dance program will run simultaneously at three different locations in the Bay Area (San Jose, Palo Alto, and the East Bay). At each location, there will be two dance sessions a week for the six weeks. Each dance session will be approximately two hours. Participants will have to come to the Palo Alto VA for assessments before and after the study. Each assessment session will take approximately three hours and will be performed by our research staff. The last day of the dance program will be a voluntary dance competition combining everyone from all three locations. The participants of the dance competition will be competing for cash prizes.
American DanceWheels (americandancewheels.com) will be coming to teach the full dance course at each location. They specialize in wheelchair ballroom and Latin dancing and normally partner one able-bodied person with one disabled person. Along with the wheelchair dancing study, American DanceWheels will be holding a teacher certification course for wheelchair ballroom dancing over the course of two weekends.
Feel free to forward this information along and those who are interested or have questions can e-mail meela.mehdi@va.gov or call (650) 493-5000 ext. 65635.
See the attached flyer for more info wc dancing flyer