Transforming Medicine Through Traditional Dance

Bodies tell stories of illness. In traditional dance, these bodies perform cultural stories combined with elements of ritual, food, and religion with culturally empowering movements. Through dancing modern stories of medicine in traditional dance formats, this project changes how we all perceive illness and reminds us of our never-ending resilience.

Transforming medicine through traditional dance is the basis of the Aseemkala Initiative. Created by physicians-in-training who also trained in classical Indian dance styles, this project translates patient illness into a diverse representation of patient empowerment through interviewing, choreographing, and performing their stories in traditional art formats. Why use classical dance to create choreographies on healthcare? Because our bodies tell stories in movement, in sickness, and in health and these stories need to be shared in their authentic, multicultural music, movements, and language. Traditional dances have served as holistic systems of health for centuries. The elements of public health, such as community based medicine, cultural aspects of health advocacy, and providing care in resource-poor settings through using local systems, combines with the intrinsic healing extant in physical movement, emotional expression, and dramaturgy in traditional dance. This initiative takes this system one step further by adding medical narratives as the medium of performance. 

Choreographing patient narratives in traditional dance styles not only highlights realities of illness in a specific community, but also reveals their perceptions and local understanding of healing from disease. Furthermore, traditional dance performances empower specifically indigenous communities who face injustice at every level and who suffer physical and mental health consequences from their struggles for equality. These dances inspire creativity for traditional artists while preserving traditional arts for future generations to learn. 

In medicine, we are taught that illness is affected by environment. In public health, we learn that changing the environment can improve health outcomes for a community. But neither system discusses how to empower a community from within itself. The Aseemkala Initiative aims to bring physicians and traditional artists together to choreograph stories of medicine and to realize the potential for healing through performance. 

Healing requires seeing one's own potential. Most globally-scaled designs for solutions rarely involve local input. Traditional arts flips this paradigm by giving control of the narrative back to the people. This especially empowers indigenous women who carry traditional dance knowledge and through performance, can offer their vital voices in a culturally appropriate yet revolutionary medium. Choreographing traditional dances based on patient narratives not only teaches communities about health issues, but also preserves culture and promotes creativity. This project reveals the common thread of the human experience-of arts and medicine-when faced with illness and the audacity to regain health.  

Patients and physicians tell stories through movement. From the way we all carry the burden or joy of our physical and mental realities, we dance more often than we realize. Rarely does medicine look at potential for healing when assessing illness in their patients. The solution is true understanding of patient experiences. Understanding these stories requires a medium that can immerse the observer—the medical student or physician—in the same milieu of physicality, mentality, and spirituality as the patients and find a suitable vehicle for all to connect in this journey. This medium for such holistic submersion is traditional dance. 

The Aseemkala Initiative works with diverse indigenous communities to create cross-cultural dance stories. Co-choreography between physician-dancers and local traditional artists enables indigenous women participants to be in charge of their own stories and also share experiences with physicians and other participants. Through this process of dance creation, we learn how indigenous communities specifically treat women’s health and understand their own bodies in healing and in illness. Empowering one woman in a community to see her artistic culture as a intrinstic tool for health improvement, we believe, will form the seed of change needed to improve health for indigenous communities. 

Performances and audience feedback at shows - Creating choreographies on patient experiences

Surveys of physician and traditional artist understanding and experience in this project - Co-choreography with physicians and traditional artists

Community health assessments prior to project implementation followed by health literacy and health care quality pre- and post- performance surveys - Impact on healthcare based on topic of choreography

I spent one year as a Watson Fellow studying the connections between traditional dance cultures of the world, their healing systems, and their current states of healthcare delivery in 2013. I am now a medical student planning to become an Ob-Gyn. As both a dancer and a doctor with previous experience in the field, the technology of passionate creativity and vast access to a myriad of stories is the key to making this project truly successful and sustainable, especially in low resource communities. 

In medicine, we are taught that illness is affected by environment. In public health, we learn that changing the environment can improve health outcomes for a community. But neither system discusses how to empower a community from within itself or how to bring diverse voices to mainstream medicine. This project flips the power paradigm through offering local artists, especially women, the opportunity to dictate how their stories in medicine are told and how they see the issues facing the health of their community. Traditional dances on medical narratives empowers indigenous communities from within. 

Dance is free of cost and requires only interest in performing and laughing and moving to participate. It only requires training in how to create these choreographies and present them to both community and medical audiences in any part of the globe. 

We are hoping to apply for grants. Currently we are a team of four--two medical students and two undergraduate students planning on entering medicine. All of us perform classical Indian dance. We have performed and conducted workshops here in the United States, however, we hope to expand this project on a global scale. We plan on using our interests in global medicine to create these traditional dance workshops in resource poor yet culturally rich settings to increase the variety of traditional dances and bring this concept of performing medicine to new communities. We also hope to measure impact through community health assessment and surveys. 

Human capital is our biggest challenge. Dancing requires people to participate and encouraging physicians and local members to dance can be difficult. I have personally seen this challenge in my work as a Watson Fellow. Coming up with ways to incorporate more interest in performing as well as developing financial incentives to support women as they danced would go a long way in expanding this project and transforming healthcare delivery in resource poor settings. 

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Solve encourages and guides new innovators to see the potential within themselves by helping them bring ideas to life. This form of encouragement is exactly what the Aseemkala mission stands for and we are so excited to be able to apply for Solve. Through the support and advice Solve provides, we hope to learn the tools and techniques to implementing ideas on a global, sustainable scale. 

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