Mark Morris Dance Group Developing App For Sufferers Of Parkinson’s Disease

Local organization Mark Morris Dance Group is taking their groovy skills and turning them into a life-altering app for New Yorkers with Parkinson’s Disease. The Brooklyn Paper says MMDC is using a $25,000 grant to develop a Google Glass app, so that Parkinson’s patients–to whom the company has offered dance therapy for the past 13 years–can experience the benefits of a good boogie without even leaving home. Says the publication:

The class uses music and repetitive movement to help people with Parkinson’s regain control of their movements and, sometimes, become unstuck when their limbs aren’t responding to their brains’ commands… The practice and pace provided by dance instruction works as therapy and as a coping mechanism for the acute onset of symptoms, according to a woman who suffers from the disease, runs a therapy class, and helped with the initial planning of the Glass project.

David Leventhal, program director of Dance for PD (the meeting of MMDC and the Brooklyn Parkinson Group), stresses to the paper the importance of a “portable” dance therapy session–not only will patients be able to use it outside of the Mark Morris studio, but unlike the DVD already available, the hope is that they’ll be able to control the app totally (or almost totally) hands-free.

SS+K is helping the Mark Morris Dance Group engineer the app, which was one of five chosen by Google in a grant contest that received 1,300 submissions.