Safely Bringing Dance to Older Australians, One Step at a Time

Physical activity is a key to healthy ageing, and dance ticks all the boxes for helping older Australians keep moving. Dance provides the motivation, social connection, and physical movement to help people stay healthy in later life. Ausdance VIC’s Creative Ageing through Dance is charting the path in safely bringing dance to older Australians one step at a time.

Health professionals also know that teaching older adults to dance safely is also important. Even experienced dance teachers will need to upgrade their specialist skills in this area. For this reason, Ausdance VIC is offering a bespoke course for dancers and health professionals who want to add a new training skill to their repertoire.

Creative Ageing through Dance is an industry-led course developed by Ausdance VIC to train a new workforce to safely teach and facilitate dance and expressive movement activities to older people. Anyone with a minimum five years of dance, health, or allied health experience can enroll. The full program includes four modules and can be completed as accredited or non-accredited training.

This new course brings together the latest research and evidence-based practice in the areas of health, community and dance to train dance and allied health professionals to confidently deliver safe and engaging dance and expressive movement programs that can improve the lives of older Australians.

The Creative Ageing through Dance program gives learners a theoretical understanding of how best to teach dance and expressive movement to older people, and offers practical tools plus the experience needed to safely deliver dance activities in this specialised context. Graduates of the Creative Ageing through Dance 4 module learning pathway will be registered with Ausdance Victoria as a trained and qualified teacher of Creative Ageing (Dance).

Module One: An Introduction to Creative Ageing through Dance is delivered wholly online, and enrollments for the second intake are open at a low introductory cost of $33 for Ausdance members, and $66 for non-members. The course can be easily completed in 10-12 hours of online learning. The course commences 16 May and must be completed by 10 June.

Module Two: Developing Practice will run as a two-day intensive. The intensive will take place on 18-19 June in Melbourne and is offered as an accredited or non-accredited training.

Full details, course fees and enrolment gateway are on the Ausdance VIC website: https://ausdancevic.org.au/courses/creative-ageing/course-1/

There is still time to enroll and complete the first two modules by the end of June! Modules 3-4 will follow over the next 6 months.