'Dancing with Dementia' - short film

Dancing with Dementia is a short dance film, based on an excerpt from the original audio documentary, which aims to animate and reimagine the metaphorical discourse around dementia by asking people affected by the condition to conceive of it as a dance.

A range of emotionally charged metaphors, often relating to the inanimate and the passive, pervades the popular imagination, and these are found not only in newspaper accounts, political speeches and feature films, but in medical and scientific texts. The language used to talk/write about dementia, and the people who live with it, is often stigmatising and dehumanising.  Dance, with its emphasis on reciprocity, balance, exchange and animation has the potential to create a powerful counter-discourse; a significant challenge to the plethora of metaphors connected to the inanimate and the passive.

Comprised entirely of archived footage of social dancing in early-mid twentieth century UK, the film has been cut and re-combined to create a rhythmic and gestural choreography which is reflective of dementia as a social, relational and embodied phenomenon. Dancing with Dementia has been screened internationally, across three continents.

Conception & editing - Elaine Harvey

Sound Design - Chris Gregory