Guest Speaker July 11: Rachel Balaban
“Making the Case for Arts in Healthy Living” with Rachel Balaban
Join us at the Library Tuesday, July 11 @ 5:30 pm
Rachel Balaban is a Rhode Island teaching artist and movement educator committed to helping people of all ages access their vitality and health through using their bodies, in particular, through dance. Rachel will speak about what she’s learned through two of her programs—DAPpers and ASaP—as well as her work with medical students as an Associate Teacher at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University. The program will be interactive and Rachel will give a demonstration and invite others to take part—no experience necessary.
- Dance for All People (DAPpers) is a multigenerational dance program that Rachel founded for people with movement challenges and aging bodies. It is based in part on her work as a certified instructor and regional coordinator for Dance for PD (Parkinson’s disease).
- Rachel’s newest venture is as principal at Momentum Learning Lab, which applies her experience as a teaching artist and movement educator in creative leadership training programs for business and non-profit teams.
- Rachel is also a co-investigator on the 3D Project—A Deeper Dive into DAPpers—working to codify the methodology of DAPpers and to underscore the importance of combining an intergenerational framework with art modalities in the effort to empower older adults, caregivers, and young students as they build meaningful connections with each other.
Rachel has been coming to FI in the summers for over 40 years and looks forward to sharing her work with the FI community.