After 11 years as artistic director of the WA Ballet, Aurelien Scannella’s ballet life has come full circle with an exciting new role beside ballerina-choreographer wife Sandy Delasalle and Perth ballet teacher Lisa Purchas.
The trio have joined forces to create a ballet-inspired exercise program, Ballet 4 Wellbeing for older people which also includes Lisa’s Ballet 4 Alzheimer’s program which Lisa has run since 2017.
Lisa has a background of dancing and teaching in New Zealand, Indonesia and WA. Belgian born Aurelien had an illustrious dancing and teaching career in Europe and Australia while Sandy had a lauded ballet career in Europe before joining the WA Ballet.
The new program, which has the full support of Professors Ralph Martins and Vicky Vass from the Australian Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, will soon be introduced into aged care homes across Perth.
It has already been enthusiastically received with positive feedback.
Sandy Delasalle says it’s a big challenge for the team to transfer ballet from the theatre or studio to aged care and community facilities.
The program evolved after Lisa met Aurelien, Sandy and their son Matteo for dinner. The trio touching on personal experience with Alzheimer’s, Lisa and Aurelien both losing parents from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
“There was this connection with dance and family, and I think the timing was pretty good,” Lisa says. ”We decided to create a program that was bigger than just for people with Alzheimer’s disease but for older people in an aged care setting or it could be done privately with groups such as the Silver Chain.
“It’s a ballet-inspired program for older people who might be at different levels of ability so they might be seated for a class or they might be able to stand at the barre and do exercises there. Or there might be a combination of both.”
Says Aurelien: “We decided to add to the program the virtual reality experience which has been trialled for the past three years by Bethesda Physiocare.
“We noticed immediately that the level of anxiety went down and the need for drugs decreased in patients who had access to this technology.
“A colleague has developed a library of different experiences and we decided to create one experience for older people facing dementia and Alzheimer’s because usually these people don’t like to be surrounded by others and prefer a private environment.
“We are bringing ballet with music. The difference between exercise and ballet is the emotional connection. People get such a connection from watching ballet but now they will experience it from doing it and that’s really different.”
Lisa says people improve their strength and balance significantly by doing ballet but they wanted to do something that was quantifiably proven. The McCusker Foundation will engage an intern to carry out research to confirm that ballet lifts mood and movement improves breath.
”If you look at many existing exercise programs for older people, and it’s not being critical, but they are quite rudimentary. Ours, we hope, will have physical and mental benefits, reducing depression and anxiety and lifting mood.”
Aurelien says: “We all have different skills that we can bring together, but our link is love of ballet.”
For more information go to www.ballet4well being.com.au or email ballet4wellbeing@gmail.com
