Ooh Aah!

“Ooh Aah!” was a dance set to the pounding rhythm of KODO’s Taiko drums. The dance featured 40 people with Parkinson’s and 10care givers sourced from all over the world, and was performed at the 5^th World Parkinson’s Congress in Kyoto, Japan.

It was the first large-scale dance ever performed as part of a WPC opening ceremony. Pam had pitched an opening ceremony dance to the Executive Director of the Congress,Eli Pollard in years past, but it was too logistically fraught. Having recently begun working with Colin they pitched a more robust format:  Pam and Colin pitched the dance to WPCExecutive Director Eli Pollard to celebrate the international fabric of the WPC, the culture of the host nation, and the impact dance has had on the PD community.

To achieve this,Pam and Colin pioneered a new way of teaching choreography: Pam split up the dance into small, learnable segments, and Colin shot and arranged these segments into a multi-lingual web tutorial. They then sent it out to people with Parkinson’s and care givers from across the world who would be attending the conference. People learned the dance with their local dance groups or inside of their homes in their respective countries. Everyone then came together the day before the Congress to rehearse in person before taking the stage in front of thousands.

Although Pam believed this approach would work, she was not sure. Flying to Japan, walking to the first rehearsal, she became increasingly anxious. When she got into the room, it felt disorganized and chaotic as few people could speak the same language. However, the moment rehearsal began everyone snapped into unison.Despite being unable to communicate with words everyone was moving together.

The dancers went onto deliver a forceful, spirited performance for the top doctors and researchers in the world. Some of the dancers had never been on stage before. The then president of the WPC said the following of the performance:

“This [piece] was an extraordinary undertaking. Pamela filmed the choreography in New York and sent it out to people in Japan, Australia, Europe and the U.S. Some rehearsed in small groups in their living room, others learned it on their own, and tonight, they will come together to perform it for the first time ... The WPC is about collaboration and perseverance [in the face of Parkinson’s], and Pam’s choreography exemplifies that spirit.”

Mie Maruyama, one of the performers also gave a wonderful quote:

“WhenI arrived in Kyoto, I was not confident I could do the dance,” said dancer MieMaruyama. “But once I felt the energy of the other people around me, I began to believe in my body. It made me excited to move, instead of scared.”

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