When contemporary dance meets dyspraxia

This was extremely annoying, especially given my fluency and confidence in the dark corners of a club. I’d joke in the changing rooms – my legs are dyslexic! – but deep down it was frustrating and embarrassing. Sometimes I’d find a flow, though, and this was joyful. It kept me coming back week in, week out, for nearly two years.

Eventually I realised that the problem wasn’t “dyslexic legs”. The problem was that I have many symptoms of dyspraxia, something that commonly occurs in people like me who have a diagnosis of neurofibromatosis, the most common of the rare neurological disorders.

Clumsiness and chromosome 17

I’ve always been pretty clumsy, especially under stress. I can’t do even simple maths in my head and my poor sense of direction is a source of comedy to my friends. I’ve always been better at improvising than following instruction.  A 2017 study of 159 children with this neurogenetic disorder found serious motor problems in 61 per cent of the children studied, often alongside ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.

My clumsiness wasn’t me: it was chromosome 17, where the genetic mutation for neurofibromatosis sits. “Developmental motor problems are frequently overlooked in clinical practice, yet they can have a considerable impact on children’s lives,” wrote the study’s authors, pointing to evidence that early motor intervention (like, perhaps, a dance class) can have a beneficial effect. They noted a 2009 study showing that in ADHD, motor-affected children receiving physiotherapy presented less frequently with emotional and behavioural problems.

There was a specific reason I found it so hard to learn steps. Verbal instructions are difficult for neurodivergent dancers because dyspraxia affects how we process information. Dr Julian Ahmed is a consultant in audiovestibular medicine at Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital.

“Auditory processing disorder has a huge crossover with dyspraxia and dyslexia. These will often co-occur with ADHD or autism,” he says. “In simple terms, information from our eyes and muscles doesn’t match up or get integrated in the coordination centre of the brain. We know what we want to do, but the body doesn’t obey.”

“Technique classes are hard on my brain,” says CEO of integrated dance company Croí Glan and fellow dyspraxic Tara Brandle, who trained at Laban in the 1980s, and like me, was an avid clubber. In learning new dances, she relies heavily on muscle memory. “I don’t try and visualise moves; I just trust that my reptile brain knows what’s coming up.”

“If they start going ‘left arm rises up and swings down, drop onto your right foot and swivel’… I’m just lost,” she says. “My head is spinning and I start to feel irritated, panicky. I can’t take it all in.” These days she can easily recognise neurodiverent kinfolk when she’s teaching class. “It’s this mad mixture,” she says, “of being a good dancer but not being able to remember steps.”

Movement as medication

There’s emerging evidence says Dr Ahmed, citing Dr Edward ‘Ned’ Hallowell’s NY Times bestseller ‘Delivered From Distraction’, that complex integration activity like dance or martial arts can have lasting effects, above and beyond becoming a better dancer. “These activities start to get things back into sync,” he says.

Dr Ahmed’s interest isn’t entirely clinical: he was diagnosed with ADHD at age 38.  Knowing what he knows about complex integration activity, he decided to self-medicate through skateboarding and by taking up jive, because he figured that the spins, manipulation and fast legwork required by the dance style would help re-sync his signals.

“I know with hindsight that the periods I did a lot better with my ADHD symptoms were when I was going raving, dancing all night,” he says. “After that I did martial arts. These were coping strategies that worked. Where I’ve destabilised is when I changed jobs, had to start commuting, couldn’t keep stuff up.”

His experience chimed with mine. I’m pretty sure I’d have shown up in the 61 per cent of people with motor issues in the neurofibromatosis study if they’d studied me pre-dance. I’m also pretty sure that I’d have slipped out of that category if they repeated the tests after a year at Laban.

I was still a beginner, but I no longer finished all the phrases facing the wrong way. My legs became less ‘dyslexic’ and the rest of me followed – I am better at planning and organisation and I’m more acquainted with my lefts and rights. I’m still pretty bad at directions but, hey, it’s dancing, not magic.