Grantees
and Partners

Mark Morris Dance Group

Overview:

Dance for PD®, a program of the Mark Morris Dance Group, is an award-winning, research-backed program that uses dance to welcome individuals with Parkinson’s disease and their families to experience the joys and benefits of physical and creative expression–while addressing symptom-specific concerns related to balance, cognition, motor skill, depression and physical confidence. Created in 2001, the program offers free weekly dance, music, and movement classes for people with Parkinson’s and their care partners online and, during normal operations, at nine locations in New York City as well as comprehensive teacher training and certification, media resources, and performance activities throughout the year.

Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative condition that over time, reduces both physical and cognitive abilities. Once someone is diagnosed with Parkinson’s, their diagnosis often becomes a major part of their identity. Research has shown that movement and social activity are effective interventions to help slow the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. In a dance class, everyone participating, including care givers, participates in movement with music that can provide a respite from this condition, and along with feeling better physically, the classes help build community and remind people that they are more than a diagnosis.

Grant:

Purpose: to build upon its strong foundation of existing infrastructure, emerging partnerships, and lessons learned.

Funds from the Illumination Fund will help Dance for PD® build on existing infrastructure and partnerships to deepen engagement with Spanish-, Mandarin-, and English-speaking communities, as well as Black and African American individuals living with Parkinson’s, as part of an ongoing effort to broaden access, responsiveness, and inclusion across communities.

Additional funding will support a hybrid training platform for Spanish-speaking teachers, a CaringKind-partnered professional development series to help teaching artists sensitively support individuals with cognitive impairment and dementia, and expanded technology-supported resources that increase At-Home access alongside continued in-person offerings.

Impact:

Dance for PD® moved from building access to establishing sustained, community-rooted programming across New York City. The program expanded its Spanish-language offerings into Brooklyn, building on earlier work in Washington Heights and East Harlem, and launched its first in-person Mandarin-language program at CPC Nan Shan Older Adult Center in Flushing, Queens. These milestones advance Dance for PD®’s core aim: ensuring that people living with Parkinson’s across New York City, particularly those in communities historically excluded from Parkinson’s services, can access high-quality, artist-led programming that is culturally relevant, linguistically accessible, and rooted in trust.

In 2025 Dance for PD®:

• Delivered more than 600 free classes in English, Spanish, and Mandarin across in-person and online platforms, reaching a total of 1,415 unique participants.
• Year round, offered 7-15 free classes (60-75 minutes each) five days a week, online, in-person, or by phone, in English, Spanish, and/or Mandarin, and maintained their long-established English-language classes in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx (regularly drawing 35-70 registered participants).
• Provided 128 hours of teacher training to 120 teaching artists.

 

Index photo by Amber Star Merkens.
Banner photo by Eddie Marritz.