The Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) and the Brooklyn Parkinson Group (BPG) started offering free dance classes for people with Parkinson’s in the Fall of 2001. Since 2005, the two organizations have expanded the Dance for PD® programme into more than 40 other communities around the world by engaging participants in Dance for PD® master classes, training teachers through intensive workshops, and by nurturing relationships among organizations so that on-going classes are available to local communities.
Hrishikesh’s Centre of Contemporary Dance in affiliation with MMDG has initiated this programme in Pune. The programme is supported and conducted in association with the Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation. The programme facilitators integrate movement from Indian classical and modern dance, and choreographic repertory. The class is an aesthetic experience that uses the elements of narrative, imagery, live music and community to develop artistry and grace while addressing such PD-specific concerns as balance, flexibility, coordination, isolation and depression.
Hrishikesh Pawar established the Centre of Contemporary Dance in the year 2007 in Pune after completing the ‘Dance Teaching Programme’ at the Palucca Schule Hochschule fur Tanz und Musik, Dresden, Germany. Currently the Artistic Director of the Centre, he primarily aims to promote the Contemporary Dance form in India.
