Grantees
and Partners

Dances for a Variable Population

Overview:

Founded in 2005, Dances for a Variable Population is a multi-generational dance company and educational organization. They promote strong and creative movement among older adults of all abilities, enabling them to build creativity, improve their mental and physical health, strengthen social connections, and enhance their quality of life. Since its beginning, Dances for a Variable Population (DVP) has served more than 5,000 low-income, minority, and underserved older adults across 40 senior centers in NYC.

Before the pandemic, NYC’s older adults faced significant mental health risk factors, including high rates of social isolation and depression. These challenges are even more extreme among low-income senior populations that Dances for a Variable population primarily works with, which have lower perception of their overall health (only 31% of low-income older adults rate their health as excellent, vs 57% overall), are more likely to live alone (53% vs. 32% overall) and have higher rates of depression (16% vs 9% overall). (NYC Health Department, Health of Older Adults in New York City, 2019).

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness was at epidemic levels affecting over 60% of the population (per a 2019 CIGNA survey). The SILVER Study Among Older New Yorkers (Columbia University’s ICAP Global Health Center, 2022) uncovered severe impacts of COVID on the mental health of NYC older adults who live independently. The survey found that 20% of participants (aged 70 or older) screened positive for depression and 20% for anxiety (more than double pre-COVID rates). Rates were even higher in high-poverty groups; among participants with an annual income less than $25,000, 40% screened positive for depression and 30% screened positive for anxiety, while for participants with income greater than $100,000, 2% screened positive for depression and none screened positive for anxiety. In an earlier study, 50% of those surveyed know someone who died of COVID- 19, and 68% reported interacting with people “a lot less” since the pandemic started.

Grant:

Purpose: To support the development of Moving Minds, an adaptation of its Movement Speaks® program, which will add a mental health specialist to expand and enhance dance and movement workshops for older adults in Harlem, the Bronx, Queens, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side.

Movement Speaks®, DVP’s flagship program, is a sequential 12-35 week program for groups of 10-40 older adults. The curriculum follows a series of movement exercises and individual and collaborative creative movement prompts, led by teaching artists, culminating in the creation of original dance works, which participants perform together.

As mental health challenges exploded during the pandemic, Dances for a Variable Population saw the potential to deepen and extend the benefits Movement Speaks® program by integrating a mental health component. They engaged a mental health professional to work with the teaching artists. Through the grant, the mental health professional provided training to lead discussion groups before and after classes to “check in” on the participants’ mental health and wellness, as well as on satisfaction and engagement with the programs.

Impact:

Dances for a Variable Population built in an evaluation framework at the beginning of Moving Minds component, with quantitative and qualitative components. The surveys and focus groups documented a positive impact on mental and physical health and quality of life, including increased confidence, creativity, positive self-concept, and increased social connection.

• Participants rated their physical health as significantly better at the end of the program than before they started in the program.
• Participants rated their mental health and social life as significantly better at the end of the program.
• Participants rated their levels of isolation as significantly less at the end of the program.
• Participants reported that they understood dance, were more creative, and learned new dance skills.
• Qualitative results indicate a shift from a negative/neutral stance in participants to a positive one.
• The feedback from the instructors corresponds with the feedback from the participants.

In 2022, Moving Minds was offered at four locations (in the Bronx, Harlem, Queens, and by zoom), and in 2023, Moving Minds expanded to six additional locations (in the Bronx, Harlem, the Upper West Side, the Lower East Side, and Chinatown). The year culminated with the creation of a Moving Minds handbook to remind teaching artists of the new skills and approaches they learned throughout the project.