Performing Arts
This fall, HAND Performing Arts introduces the Artist in Residence program. Click here to find out more.
What
We Do
• Offer professional performers at patient bedsides
• Bring professional performers to families, visitors and staff
• Regularly celebrate diversity through the arts
• Produce annual Colleague Cabaret to care for Caregivers
• Offer Lobby for Arts, bringing artists and artisans to perform in Hospital lobby
The Program
The patient is waiting for medication he ordered to ease his post-surgery hip pain, when the dancer enters the room. With music from her CD player wafting through the room, she gently guides him through a five-minute arm dance. As she departs, the man cancels the medication, telling the nurse "I’m not even thinking of the pain."
A nurse follows us out of the room after the a cappella singer’s performance. She happily reports that her patient’s blood pressure reduced by 25 points.
The phlebotomist tries several times, unsuccessfully, to put a needle into the vein of a patient. The African storyteller sits down next to the bed and begins to quietly and rhythmically beat his drum and weave a story. The needle slips right in.
In the waiting area for chemotherapy treatment, an elderly patient invites his wife to dance with him to the violinist’s music. After their whirl together he says to the musician, “You made us remember that we are still in the ‘land of the living’ and our ability to enjoy life is not over due to a stinking diagnosis! Keep up the good work and we will try to remember to sing a little and dance a little every day.”
A slight, white haired woman encumbered with tubes, carefully rises from her chair, and bear hugs the opera singer, then me, then the artist again. "Thank you for treating me like a person. I'm not just a patient."
A woman suffering from an acute psychiatric disorder appears stiff, distant and non-responsive. The pianist begins playing and singing familiar popular tunes. The woman opens her eyes, stands up and begins to dance. Several minutes later she is still dancing, with a soft smile on her lips. Then, she sits back down, listens and rests. In a few minutes, she is up on her feet again, moving, smiling...
A nurse gently dances with a patient recovering from a heart transplant as he walks around and around in the cardiac ward. They exchange a smile as if realizing the miracle of the moment.
The family gathered around the grand piano in the hospital lobby laughs, tells stories and cries as the pianist plays. “I feel well-prepared for surgery tomorrow morning; my heart is full,” the gentleman says.
