Marc Vlemmix
Nominated for the Innovation Award Nederlandse Dansdagen Maastricht 2025
About Marc
Most dancers stop dancing around the age of 35, or at most 40. But Marc did the exact opposite. At 37, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he truly began dancing. He had always danced for fun. At 18, he was already teaching ballroom dance to pay for his own dance lessons. As artistic director of Danshuis Station Zuid, he guided choreographers but never took the stage himself.
That changed with his diagnosis in 2010, now 15 years ago. Where many would retreat, Marc chose to face the challenge head-on. Dance became his way to defy the disease. No waiting, just moving. Constantly reinventing himself, with his ever-changing body at the center of his movement research. Always pushing boundaries. No stagnation, no surrender. With the dancers in his company—who live with Parkinson’s, rheumatism, MS, or the challenges of aging—as his source of inspiration.
Driven by this personal motivation, he has been creating dance performances and short dance films with his company, Marc Vlemmix Dance, since 2020. His work is emphatically not about limitations but about the power of dance and the resilience of the human spirit. MVD aims to contribute to a cultural landscape that includes rather than excludes, valuing the richness that comes from diversity.
In and outside the studio, his partner Rosan Chinnoe is his (artistic) counterpart. Rosan's photographic eye and aesthetic films help create the company's distinctive signature. Together with graphic designer Fenna Schaap, involved from the very beginning, they form the artistic core of the company. They created several performances and dance films.
Dancing Against Parkinson’s
In 2012, he began teaching dance classes for people with Parkinson’s, inspired by the Dance for PD methodology from New York. Together with Andrew Greenwood, he further developed the method based on his own experience and founded the Dance for Health foundation in 2013. Under Marc’s leadership, the foundation grew into a national network, offering dance classes in over 40 cities, where 700 people with Parkinson’s moved every week. Marc engaged major dance companies such as Het Nationale Ballet, Scapino Ballet, and Introdans, ensuring that art remained central, rather than healthcare.
