This is the incredible moment a former prima ballerina suffering with Alzheimer’s is transformed when she hears the music from Swan Lake.
Marta C Gonzalez, who died in 2019, is shown sitting in her wheelchair at a care home in Valencia. A carer places headphones on her and begins playing Tschaikovsky’s Swan Lake – which Ms Gonzalez danced to in her youth.
She had been a prima ballerina with the New York Ballet in the 1960s. As the music floods through her, Ms Gonzalez is visibly moved. Within moments, her hands instinctively reenact the graceful movements she had performed on stage in 1967. She continues to follow along with the music and remembers the choreography she danced to decades ago.
The emotional moment, captured before Ms Gonzalez died in 2019, was shared by the Asociacion Musica para Despertar, a Spanish charity which uses the music of dementia patients’ lives to improve their mood and memory, among other things.
In the video Ms Gonzalez listens to the music through a pair of headphones and soon begins to replicate the choreography she danced to all those years ago.