A Touch of Companionship

Abstract

Dance activities are promoted with a range of benefits in institutional settings for people living with dementia (PLWD) and necessitate the active involvement of companions for engagement. This ethnomethodological study uses multimodal conversation analysis to explore how the role of the companion emerges to engage PLWD in dance activities, with special attention on different uses of touch to support engagement in embodied interactions. Analyses of video recordings focus on interactions between companions and PLWD in both structured and unstructured dance activities in institutional settings in Canada, Finland, and the UK. We demonstrate how companions use touch and other multimodal resources to engage participants with others in dance activities. We argue that the role of the companion emerges in interaction and can shift from participant to participant, including PLWD. We conclude with discussion and recommendations for supporting the engagement of PLWD with sensitivity to how actions obligate responses.

Keywords

• ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA)
• multimodality
• dementia
• dance
• engagement
• companions