Last summer's APDA Newsletter reported a Parkinsonian's good experience with choral singing. He concentrated on watching the conductor very closely, even "ducking around the sopranos" to do so, and his shaking stopped.

Another of the performing arts can be helpful to people with Parkinson's disease: dancing. This can help in a variety of ways, including but not limited to exercise, transportation, and fun.

The energy expended in square dancing or ballroom dancing is valuable exercise which can improve your general health. (We are not talking about the frantic pace of aerobic dancing which, properly paced, is valuable for those who can handle it.)

A recent symposium reported one couple's use of ballroom dancing for locomotion. The wife, who had PD, often found herself unable to move forward, but she could take steps backward. A solution came after a little experimentation. When the wife wanted to move across the room but couldn't, her husband would face her in a dancing position, place his left hand on her waist and take her right hand, and dance her to her destination

A year ago, a Milwaukee Journal story told of a group of senior citizens in that city who have taken up line dancing in a big way. It is "one of the biggest draws on the senior circuit," the Journal reported, "and many a dancing retiree thinks nothing of driving from one senior center to another to catch the next dance session."

What does that have to do with PD? Maybe more than you might think. One of several dancers the reporter interviewed was a guy named Ralph, who wouldn't give his last name, but was delighted to demonstrate how easily he can now touch his toes, a feat that wasn't possible 15 months ago for the 66-year-old who has PD. He had such poor balance that he had to hold onto something or kneel down on one knee, to retrieve anything he had dropped. After retiring, Ralph said, he sat home watching TV for more than a year. Then he decided to check out a senior center near his home. First he tried playing pool. Then he tried dancing.

Now he goes from class to class, taking tap and line-dancing classes at Washington Park, and country-western classes at Wilson. Since starting to dance, Ralph has lost 30 pounds. But he said his greatest joy is being able to move freely again.

"This was my first experience with getting out. And if I hadn't gone, I'd still be sitting at home deteriorating."

Nobody says that coping with PD is all singing and dancing, but dancing, like singing, may make the coping not only easier and more successful, but more fun as well.