The Het Danspaleis is an initiative, which exists already over ten years. Here elderly people can meet up and enjoy music and dancing together.  How can projects like this be an example for other communities in the battle against loneliness of elderly people?

When you enter the Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht on a Saturday afternoon you feel like you’ve travelled back in time. A DJ board decorated with red velvet and golden hangers surrounded by old vinyl records is the first thing coming into your sight.  Elderly people sit around the dancefloor in old-fashioned outfits preparing to dance. One person of those is  Chu Long. She changes her brown boots for sparkly red ballerinas. “I come here every month. Dancing has a great impact – if you move, your head keeps moving too”, she explains.

Buug helps participants to feel comfortable and offers them a hand on the dancefloor.

Chu speaks about the Het Danspalais. This is a event series, which creates a space, where elderly people can come together and enjoy music and dancing.  Buug, a volunteer at the event says: „Dancing brings a smile on peoples faces“. As a volunteer Buug helps the participants feel comfortable and introduce them to other participants. At the Het Danspaleis not only tunes like “Pretty women” or “Tutti Frutti” fill the room. Laughter and chatter everywhere creating an enthusiastic and joyful environment.

Loneliness among elderly people in the Netherlands

At the event, there’s a sense of community, which elderly people often miss. More than 55% of the elderly people feel emotional lonely, as the recent report of the Dutch National Survey of the Elderly shows. But for the Netherlands you can find a striking trend in comparison to other European countries: With increasing age the feeling of loneliness decreases in the age group over 50, according to a publication of Atlanta University last April. A 90 year old would feel less lonely than a 55 year old. Do projects like the Het Danspaleis for elderly people have an impact on this trend?

“There hasn´t been an effect evaluation of the Het Danspaleis. So it is really difficult to say that it is effective, that people become less lonely”, says Eric Schoenmakers, senior researcher at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences with a research focus on loneliness. But there are possible success factors, which could help people feeling less lonely through the Het Danspaleis: Meeting people, giving a structure to their days and moving their body through dancing with another. All those actions can help people to feel less lonely.

The DJ always has an open ear for song requests of the participants.

Different categories of loneliness

“Loneliness is a very human experience”, Schoenmakers explains. You can divide it into two categories. Loneliness you feel from time to time, and loneliness, that is a permanent feeling. The second sort of loneliness is “problematic”, how the senior researcher puts it. Not only for the well-being of the people themselves, but also for the health system in society, because loneliness often influences the health of the lonely people negatively.

So that’s why projects like the Het Dans Paleis are important, concludes Schoenmakers: “I don´t think we should judge them on whether or not they reduce loneliness in general, but it is important that they are there for people, who feel lonely.”

Since one year Chu Long comes regularly to the Het Danspaleis. The DJ already knows her favourite songs. And she is not only coming for the music and the dancing but aswell for the familiar faces she sees now and then. After she changed her ballerinas for her boots again she says: “Well then, keep on swinging!”