What if the benefits of dance extend beyond how we move our bodies—and into how we use our voices?

New research co-coordinated by Dr. Constantina Theofanopoulou and Dr. Aline Nogueira Haas, and led by Raquel Arigony C. S. Prates and colleagues, offers exciting new evidence exploring this question in people living with Parkinson’s disease.

What does brain health feel like?

At recent Brain Health Dance Socials with Sunnyside Community Services and Sunset Park Older Adult Center, DanceStream Projects and the NYU Langone Alzheimer's Disease Research Center invited community members to explore that question through shared movement.

In this issue, we explore the powerful connections between movement, language, and communication—from the poetry and dance emerging through our Raising Our Voices project to new research on dance, speech, and neurodegenerative disease.

We also celebrate the growing DanceStream Projects community and the many ways movement can create new pathways for connection, expression, and belonging.

In this episode of the Dancing into Brain Health podcast, we are joined by award-winning filmmaker, best-selling author, Certified Dementia Practitioner, and founder of Expose Dementia, Chuck Nathaniel Brown. Following his own family's experience with dementia, Chuck has dedicated his career to using film, literature, community engagement, and the arts to transform how we understand dementia—particularly within African American communities. 

Together, we explore the extraordinary role that the arts can play in increasing awareness, fostering dialogue, challenging stigma, and creating spaces where communities can learn, heal, and advocate together.

July has been a month of celebration and exciting new beginnings for DanceStream Projects.

We're thrilled to share that DanceStream Projects is now an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization—a milestone made possible by our incredible community of participants, teaching artists, partners, volunteers, board members, and supporters. As we also celebrated World Brain Day and this year's theme, Access for All, we were reminded that brain health grows wherever people come together to move, create, connect, and belong.

In this month's newsletter, you'll find updates on our new Raising Our Voices project, the latest Dancing into Brain Health podcast episode with neuroscientist Dr. Rona Graham, World Brain Day resources, and our August calendar of free programs.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Rona Graham, a neuroscientist whose research explores olfactory function as an early biomarker for cognitive impairment.

Together, we unpack how this often-overlooked sensory process is intimately tied not only to the richness of our daily lives, but also to cognition, memory, and overall brain health.

Summer is here, and so is our latest newsletter!

Join us as we celebrate Pride Month and Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month while exploring how dance can foster brain health, belonging, creativity, and connection—from New York City to Poland and beyond.

In this episode of Dancing into Brain Health, we explore the fascinating intersection of dance, neuroscience, and communication with dancer and neuroscientist Dr. Constantina Theofanopoulou. Her groundbreaking research investigates the neural substrates of speech and the ways movement — particularly dance — may support, strengthen, and even rehabilitate our ability to communicate.

Together, we uncover how rhythm and movement may activate some of the brain’s deepest communication networks, opening new possibilities for understanding speech, connection, and the profound relationship between the moving body and the speaking mind.

In this month’s newsletter, we celebrate two important commemorations, Older Americans Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.

We invite you to reflect with us on what it means to care for our health not only physically, but emotionally, socially, and creatively. And what role and responsibility we play in holding spaces that sustain the bonds, experiences and opportunities that nurture these types of meaningful relationships. 

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month 2026, DanceStream Projects executive director Magda Kaczmarska sat down with Mark Timmons, artist, advocate and person living with dementia, for a conversation about the intersections of mental health and brain health.

In this episode of the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast, we are joined by Macarena Espina Díaz, whose work centers inclusivity and human-centered design, to cultivates social and physical spaces that uphold dignity and enhance quality of life for people living with dementia.

Together, we explore the importance of inclusive design—particularly for those living with dementia—and consider how each of us can engage more intentionally with our social and physical environments to support brain health for all.

In this month’s newsletter, we celebrate the partners and champions who are helping to build environments that spark brain health and nurture wellbeing - where all of us can truly thrive.

You’ll also find highlights from DanceStream Projects’ invitation to participate in the inaugural CaringKind Conference, updates on local advocacy efforts to ensure the arts continue to shape our communities, and a glimpse of exciting new projects unfolding across New York City.

In this episode of the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast, we are joined by behavioral neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller and actor and writer Jake Broder.

Together, they take us on a journey through the intersection of neuroscience, art, and lived human experience, inviting us to reconsider what creativity is, where it lives in the brain, and how it can persist, transform, and even flourish in the face of profound change.

This month we invite you to engage not only with emerging research, but with the voices of those whose lived experience bring that research to life. As Laurie Waters shared during her presentation at the Eden Alternative Conference: “Science gives us data, lived experience gives it meaning. Bridging the two is where understanding and hope is born.”

Our guest today on the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast is Michelle Memran, a documentary filmmaker and dementia advocate who has dedicated her life’s work to transforming these narratives. Through collaborative visual storytelling alongside individuals living with dementia, Michelle amplifies the voices that most need to be heard while transforming the entire ecosystem of what we perceive living with dementia can and should be.

Together we discuss her latest projects and consider the role of artists in collaboration with communities living with dementia to shape new narratives and inform social change.

This month, we’re celebrating the many ways love shows up across the DanceStream Projects community — as courage, commitment, joy, and radical presence, especially in the face of challenge.

This month, we invite you to welcome four new teaching artists into the DanceStream Projects team, learn about our inaugural teacher training, reflect with us on the first season of the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast, and join us for the launch of Season Two.

Above all, we invite you to dance with us—whether in person or online—in spaces where we practice the simple, powerful act of being in a group body together.

Our guest today on the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast, Helen Bundy Medsger, has dedicated her life to changing this reality. Transmuting decades of partnership in care to three family members living with Lewy Body Dementia, she is a passionate advocate across research, clinical, public and policy spaces, paving a way forward and building community along the way.

Together, we discuss the role of lived experience experts at every stage of the dementia care journey, reflect on lessons learned from a lifetime of advocacy and envision a future where all those who receive a diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia are met with clarity, community and hope.

In the first episode of Season 2, we open with a conversation rooted in reflection, personal story, inspiration, and hope for new beginnings. This episode returns to the core intention behind the podcast—exploring the early seeds of impact we hope it is cultivating and sharing our evolving vision for where this work is headed next.

Our guests for this episode are Szewah Chin, communications expert and journalist, and Hilary Brown-Istrefi, dancer and choreographer. Drawing from their personal stories, practices, and perspectives, they articulate a shared vision forward and underscore the vital need for more conversations that bridge what may seem like disparate fields—but are, in fact, deeply interconnected: the arts, neuroscience, and community.

Our senses are one of the primary ways in which we encounter, interact with and make sense of the world around us. But what happens when our sensory perception begins to disintegrate and transform? And how might engaging through the arts help us heal and better understand these conditions?