Ballet for Seniors

An impressive article with an eye-catchy topic about ballet classes for older adults has pushed us to go through this topic and familiarize ourselves with recent scientific opinions in terms of this phenomenon.

Multiple studies have repeatedly proven that during ballet exercises many muscle groups are involved, which makes it ideal in terms of maintaining a good physical shape.

One of the studies has been recently carried out by the Albert Einstein Medical College in New York that proved the incredibly great effect of dances and ballet in particular to prevent deterioration of adults’ brains.

Another scientific research proved the healing effect of ballet for seniors with Parkinson’s disease. In addition, ballet helps to form and maintain correct posture and flexibility of joints, which is the key to preventing the development of arthritis, radiculitis, and other joint diseases.

Healing Power of Ballet

Due to the recent trends, ballet is no anymore only for girls of primary school age who wish to achieve the success of Maya Plisetskaya and Margot Fontaine. Now an increasing number of women and even men sometimes in the age of 50 to 60 are enrolled in special ballet classes for seniors to perform all sorts of ballet pas. Of course, such a category of dancers is not dreaming about any ambitious tasks to conquer a big stage. The main goal of these women and men is to fight against aging.

‘Dance for Lifelong Wellbeing’ Program

Recently the UK Royal Dance Academy has developed and launched a unique program called ‘Dance for Lifelong Wellbeing’. Its main feature is that it’s aimed at senior people. When selecting participants for the given program, preference is given to those women and men who never earlier in their life had an opportunity to be engaged in dances. For only two years of the program’s existence, the number of female students increased by 70%. It is noteworthy and amazing that the oldest dancer has turned 102 years old!

Health Benefits of Ballet

According to doctors, medicine has been aware for a long time about all benefits of ballet to maintain good health, and especially ballet is effective for seniors. This kind of physical activity helps to activate and train almost all muscles in the human body and boost new neural connections in the brain. As we know too intense and dynamic physical loads, like running, are not always good for seniors. While ballet classes allow older people to maintain balance, endurance and flexibility. And this, according to doctors, is the most important factor to stay healthy and energetic in older age. The results of the studies showed that ballet classes also reduce the number of dementia cases in elderly people.

New Social Contacts

Another great advantage of ballet for seniors is that it gives a great opportunity to expand a social network and make new friends. It can be very important for elderly people with grown-up children and grandchildren who live their own life and are not able to allocate much time to their parents. According to doctors, new social contacts in elder age have an important positive effect on a person’s psychological state. Most experts assume that ballet is a very powerful tool in the fight against aging.

In addition, seniors attending ballet schools are more likely to stay psychologically stable, they are less likely to experience dizziness, and the process of age-related memory loss is slowed down.