Creative Dance Effects on Community-dwelling Older Adults

The aim of present study is to analyze the effect of a Creative Dance program on well-being, physical function, body awareness, and rhythm perception and reproduction of community-dwelling older adults. This quasi-experimental study is a controlled trial.

Participants will be allocated to two groups: experimental group (who attend the Creative Dance program) and control group (who maintain usual activity).

The Creative Dance program will run for 12 weeks (3 sessions/week of 60 minutes).

Participants will be assessed 1) at baseline and at 2) at 12 weeks.

An healthspan life obey older adults to adhere to an active ageing lifestyle because it combat the natural cognitive and physical losses associated with ageing (1-3). Exercise programs have shown to be effective interventions for healthspan (2) and its attendance is high recommended by health organizations (4). Several studies have analyzed the beneficial effects of exercise programs on physical and cognitive performance of older adults, and they concluded that multimodal programs involving both physical and cognitive stimulation are more benefic than single physical or cognitive program interventions (5). Dance involves both physical and cognitive stimulation, since the participants are engaged physical, intellectually, and emotionally tasks(6). Dance explore the movement elements (body, space, time, dynamic, and relationships) and particularly the Creative Dance explore it through tasks that allow the participants to create their own movements and express ideas and feelings through body language (7). In Creative dance, tasks can be simplified according to specificities/limitations of participants and considering a holist approach (6). This dance do not require any dance technique or prior training, and promote socioemotional interactions, stimulating positive feelings, joy, and pleasure; furthermore, is a safe practice, not requiring expensive resources (6). For these reasons, Creative Dance is becoming gradually recommended for older people by investigators (6-9). In fact, Creative Dance seems to increase proprioception (8), several physical fitness parameters (7, 9), mobility (9) and life satisfaction (7) of older people. Thus, although there are only few studies in Creative Dance for older adults, this form of dance seems to be a pertinent practice to revert their usual process of loss and decline of motor and mental skills (6). We hypnotized, that a Creative Dance program may contribute to the community-dwelling older adults' healthspan, particularly we hypnotized that such program may induce improvements on physical fitness, on body awareness, and on rhythm perception and reproduction, as well to promote improvements on well-being indicators.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* Participants aged ≥60 years;
* Community-dwelling older adults living independently.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Presence of cognitive impairment (Mini-Mental State Examination) (11);
* Presence of motor impairment, neurological problems or diseases compromising the program participation;
* Participation in regular physical exercise during the previous 6 months;
* Unavailability to participate in the program.