The first dancer of the Ballet of New York in 1967, the Spanish Marta Cinta, who died during the first confinement, has been honored on social networks with the dissemination of a video recorded a year ago when she was in a residence in Muro de Alcoi (Alicante) where she appears dancing spontaneously ‘El Lago de los Cisnes’ when she heard that composition.
The initiative has been based on an association that promotes the therapeutic use of music in people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, “Music to Wake Up”, whose founder and director is the Granadanian psychologist Pepe Olmedo.
In statements to Efe, Olmedo has explained that he now recorded this artist more than a year ago when he was in the Muro de Alcoi residence (Alicante), and has continued that these days he has hung his reaction to remember her several months after her death during the first confinement.
Marta González Saldaña, known as Marta Cinta, who did her artistic training in the United States and Latin America and became the first dancer of the New York Ballet in the sixties, gets excited from her wheelchair and tries to interpret Tchaikovsky’s well-known composition with her hands.
In just a few days, more than eight million people have watched the video on social networks such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, where celebrities like actors Antonio Banderas have shared the excitement and power of music.
“A dancer will always be a dancer. Emotion in full skin, listening, feeling and flying along with ‘Swan Lake’,” notes the publication of the association, whose manager has indicated that this is an example of what they are dealing with in the training courses they develop with residences and their families.
“We encourage them to use music therapeutically, based on psychology, in people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias,” said Olmedo, who invites family members to bring back to their friends the songs that could accompany their lives.
“We met Marta González, we knew her story and tried with her the tools of ‘Music to Wake Up’ (…) In the video we can see how he reacts to one of the most important songs of his life. He was cocky and, at the beginning of the first chords, he connects with the work and gets excited,” he said.
The project of this association, which is now promoted with viral video on the Internet, began as a volunteer from the center of majors “Cáxar de la Vega”, together with the collaboration of workers, residents and family.
Since then, he has tried to share philosophy with as many people, centers and institutions as possible, and have already arrived in different cities of Asturias, Zaragoza, Madrid, Granada, Cadiz, Tenerife, Barcelona, Basque Country, Seville, Malaga, and others from outside Costa Rica.
The association seeks to “awaken” areas of the brain through music and love, since among the last to disappear in those affected by Alzheimer’s are precisely those responsible for musical memory and the ability to feel emotions.
Video via Youtube AGENCY EFE
