Tapping into a need during memory loss
With 66 years of professional dance experience, Mary Turner-Archer knows a lot about how to entertain a crowd.
But last year the dynamic, energetic 74-year-old found a new calling as a dance and rhythm teacher at assisted living facilities where residents with significant memory loss are responding to her classes. With a combination of entertainment, education and inspiration, she is helping her students sharpen their ability to focus and their coordination skills.
Turner-Archer relocated to the Coachella Valley from Fort Lauderdale after feeling called to the area. “I always feel like wherever I go, I’m spiritually led there for a purpose,” she said.
She now believes her purpose for coming to the valley was to create an adapted tap dance-based set of exercises that could be used to help support seniors’ brain function, particularly in those suffering from memory loss. Combining six simple dance steps, she creates a variety of movement and rhythm exercises.
“Whatever I teach, I teach mathematically,” she said. She counts aloud while repeating each step in front of her classes in order to demonstrate its rhythm.
Medical research supports the use of sensory stimulation as a means of building and protecting mental strength. “We don’t just have to give up” on our often slowing brain-power as we get older, she said. “We can still use it.”
With a doctorate in the performing arts, Turner-Archer is well educated in how entertainment can be inspiring for an audience. “I’m a motivator,” she said of her classroom style, in which she involves everyone, regardless of the degree of memory loss.
During a recent class at Vista Cove Memory Care Center in Rancho Mirage, she and two residents presented a series of clapping exercises to upbeat music, followed by dance routines. While most classroom participants were chair-bound and initially appeared lethargic, most responded to the rhythmic movements and cheerful songs as soon as they began, clapping along and watching closely, many smiling throughout the program.
Because of the ages of most of the participants in her classes, Turner-Archer uses musical selections that were popular in their younger years — “42nd Street” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” for example.
Participants also lived during eras in which tap dancing was especially popular. “When we think of tap dancing, we think of it in the past,” she said, “so I speak to their spirit through the words of their songs” and the dance steps of their youth.
Turner-Archer is also conducting senior and intergenerational dance classes at other facilities in the valley, aiming to spread the therapeutic benefits of dance to everyone who may benefit from it.