Please join us for a FREE 4-week workshop exclusively for people living with PD and their care partners:

CLOSE CONTACT for COUPLES with PD

led by Dance for PD® Certified Teacher Judith Sachs

Four Fridays:

May 16, 23, 30, and June 6
3:30-5 PM

Mark Morris Dance Center

3 Lafayette Avenue

Brooklyn, NY

See map

free of charge

About the workshop

As partnered couples change with age and the increased demands of Parkinson’s, they need to communicate to find new ways to collaborate and make decisions—both physically and emotionally. Additionally, they need to trade in old roles of “patient” and “care partner” and learn to trust and touch one another.

Research shows that couples living with PD will respond better not only to one another but also to their providers when mutuality is restored to the relationship.

In this 4-week workshop, participants will experiment with activities of daily living as well as movement-based sharing games and exercises, assisting one another in different ways in order to find comfort while negotiating physical and emotional realms while deepening connection within their partnership.

• Participants must register in advance and attend with a partner.

• Space is limited to eight couples; please do not register if you are unable to attend all four sessions.

•  This workshop is appropriate for all levels of mobility, including wheelchair users.

• Face masks are not required but are recommended in all spaces at the Mark Morris Dance Center; all choices are welcomed and respected.

About the teacher

Judith Sachs, a certified Dance for PD® teacher since 2017, trained in the 1960s with Alvin Ailey (jazz), Arthur Mitchell (jazz), Deborah Jowitt (modern) and Carola Goya and Matteo (Bharata Natyam and Flamenco) and started her professional life at the Hartford Stage Company in 1969 and Café LaMama (1970). But she subsequently took a different course and moved onto healthcare writing and marketing until 2011, when, with 2 hip replacements, she decided to return to her dance career.

She has been part of the Parkinson’s community in Philadelphia since that time, when she developed a patient information website for GE Healthcare on a test to determine the differences between Parkinson’s and essential tremor and simultaneously became a Dance for Parkinson’s teacher.
Her goal now, at 78, is to get everyone dancing, whether in a chair or across the floor.

In addition to teaching Dance for PD in Abington, PA, she works through her own ANYONE CAN DANCE® program in residential facilities, senior centers and private homes with those who have never considered dance or remember it fondly from childhood. In addition, she is part of the CenterStage arts in medicine program at Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, dancing with patients and caregivers in the infusion suites. Judith is a member of the Lifetime Arts teaching roster and was named Teaching Artist of the Month in November 2017. She won a 2015 Leeway Foundation Grant for her intergenerational dance project and a Leeway WOO grant for her work in cancer dance.

We look forward to seeing you!