Former Ballerina With Dementia Listens To 'Swan Lake' And Starts To Dance Again

Nov 11, 2020 by apost team

A video showing an older woman with dementia swaying to the music as she listens to Swan Lake and watches a ballerina dance has been making rounds on social media.

The video was originally shared by the Asociación Música para Despertar late last month in an attempt to show the benefits of music therapy for patients suffering from memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimer's disease. The woman, who has been identified as Marta C. Gonzalez, is said to have been a professional ballerina back in her day. 

Gonzalez was a dementia patient from Valencia, Spain, who, at the time the video was filmed in 2019, was undergoing a pioneering type of music therapy for her condition. Although the video is more than a year old, it was only recently posted by the Asociación Música para Despertar and has gone viral for its bittersweet content. Sadly, she passed away last year in her nursing home. 

The video shows Gonzalez listening to music through headphones, with a nursing home employee holding up a smartphone playing a ballet performance video. The music playing in the video is Tchaikovsky's famous Swan Lake.

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Gonzalez is almost instantly taken aback by the tune. She becomes visibly emotional as she starts swaying her arms to the sound of the track. Seemingly close to tearing up, the man in the video quickly grabs her hand and kisses it. She continues her little dance to the music with a noticeable sparkle in her eye. 

The footage makes for a beautifully heartbreaking clip, which in less than two weeks since it was uploaded, has garnered over 1 million views on youtube alone. 

Famous actor Antonio Banderas caught wind of the video as well and posted it on Twitter on Monday. 

"The emotional power of music!" the actor wrote in Spanish, his native language. 

The video enticed many to take to social media and share their own experiences of witnessing a loved one with dementia or Alzheimer's become illuminated after listening to music. 

"My dad is now non-verbal due to Alzheimer's but the last time I was able to visit him he still lit up and mouthed the words to any Beatles song I played," wrote Seth Darby, a Twitter user from Australia. 

"That was incredibly emotional," wrote John Jonson, another Twitter user from the US. "Captures the sublime beauty of humanity struggling against the onslaught of time."

According to NPR, little is known about Gonzalez's previous life. The Asociación Música para Despertar claims she was a Prima Ballerina in New York in the 1960s, although that information has since been disputed. Her story has become something of an urban mystery amongst social media users. Alastair Macaulay, a dance critic who used to write for The New York Times, has embarked on a mission to get to the bottom of Gonzalez's story. He's been posting updates regarding his investigation on Instagram, with a bombshell lead being posted on Tuesday.

McCaulay claimed to had found a document dating back to 1966, apparently stamped by Cuban authorities. The document stated that the "Higher School for Professional Studies, Nueva York," was to bestow the title of a "prima ballerina" in the "Ballet de las Américas" unto "Marta C. González Saldaña." According to NPR, the "Higher School for Professional Studies, Nueva York" does not exist anywhere in the USA. 

McCauley also found that the footage of the young ballerina dancing in the video is not of Gonzalez, as many viewers assumed, but instead of a former Russian prima ballerina, Uliana Lopatkina. Furthermore, Lopatkina performs a number called the Dying Swan, set to a musical piece called Carnival of the Animals, by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns – not Swan Lake. 

This new information has raised many questions regarding the video of Gonzalez. At the time of writing, the Asociación Música para Despertar has yet to have publicly commented on the mystery. Whatever Gonzalez's history might be, the music had undoubtedly evoked some strong emotions in the woman. 

According to the Alzheimer's Association, both music and art, in general, can be enormously therapeutic for patients with Alzheimer's or Dementia. Both offer patients an outlet for self-expression and engagement, even after their conditions have progressed to a point where communication is challenging. 

Were you just as touched as we were watching Gonzalez's emotional reaction to the music play? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you pass this story along to your friends and family!