{"id":9924,"date":"2023-12-18T09:29:01","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T09:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9924"},"modified":"2023-12-18T09:29:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T09:29:02","slug":"dancing-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9924","title":{"rendered":"Dancing in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Aude Michon dances with a patient at Gustave Roussy hospital\/St\u00e9phane Geufroi, Ouest-Franc<\/em>e<\/sup><\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

We haven\u2019t done a dame designate in ages, and now along comes one whose current career embodies the hope in dark times that we are more than ever in need of this Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet Aude Michon, founder of Elles Dansent, an organisation dedicated to bringing dance to cancer patients. She started studying music and dance at the age of seven, and at the age of fifteen won first prize at Lorraine\u2019s Conservatoire. All set for a career in the arts, you would have thought, except her family had firm ideas about what constituted a proper job, and hoofing clearly didn\u2019t fit the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michon knuckled down and went into the law, practising for thirteen years before picking up dance again. She doesn\u2019t regret those years: \u2019I loved that work; in the end it\u2019s all about human relationships and our journey through life.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She left the law to become a professional dancer in 2011, and two years later formed Elles Dansent. Now she works in many hospitals and health centres, including France\u2019s prestigious Gustav-Roussy hospital in Villejuif, Europe\u2019s most prestigious cancer hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each week she visits the hospital dressed in a different costume. Sometimes she will just dance at the foot of a patient\u2019s bed, sometimes \u2013 where possible \u2013 she will dance with the patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deftly supported by two nursing assistants, who make sure she doesn\u2019t get tangled up in her lines, Marie mirrors Michon\u2019s movements as the full-throated cellos of Saint-Saens\u2019 Carnival of the Animals<\/em> ring out through the ward. Afterwards, Marie marvels at how much this unexpected interlude in the middle of her treatment has meant to her: the sense of freedom and ease after all the pain and restriction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michon goes through the wards and rooms with her portable sound system, ready to dance anything at a moment\u2019s notice, depending on what the patient or their friends or family suggest. Some participants dance seated, other swing their legs out of bed to tap along, others who are too frail to move just hold her hand as she dances. Not surprisingly, the odd patient will resist the idea, saying it\u2019s a hospital and not a night club \u2013 and that\u2019s fine too. But even those who don\u2019t participate actively look forward to Wednesday afternoons and the blast of gaiety Michon brings. Nurses, too welcome the opportunity to dance with their patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor of digestive oncology Michel Ducreux is a staunch supporter of Michon\u2019s approach, claiming that those living in the orbit of cancer, whether as professionals or patients, need a chance to breathe, to lighten up every now and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, tears are often not far away. What else can Michon do but cry when she finds out that the patient she danced a tango with a few days previously has since died? The departure of long-standing staff, burnt out by the emotional and physical demands of their work, is also a source of sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expressing improbable responses to anything from dog fouling to the death of democracy \u2018through the medium of dance\u2019 has become something of a punch line, but Michon\u2019s innovative practice shows that in the case of cancer it can be more powerful than we suppose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sense of freedom and ease after all the pain and restriction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,132,55,276,307],"tags":[544,378,545],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9924"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9944,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9924\/revisions\/9944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}