Movement that Heals
Dr. Kelli Sharp
Dr. Kelli Sharp embodies the connection between dance and science
By Christine Byrd
Kelli Sharp has been called a unicorn. A doctor of physical therapy science who strives to improve rehabilitation for patients with neurological disorders, Sharp may not fit the typical mold of a dance department chair. Yet with dual roles in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and the School of Medicine, she serves as an elegant bridge between the arts and science.
Both personally and professionally, Sharp’s life is rooted in movement. She danced as a child, rode horses competitively as a teen and was on her college swim team in Virginia, where she studied biochemistry. Today, she works with dancers, trains medical students and treats patients who have lost the ability to speak or walk.
“I grew up watching everything move in different ways — watching horses move, watching people move, watching myself move,” said Sharp. “And there was artistry in all of those crafts.”
Rehabilitation Arts
In 1999, Sharp followed acclaimed spinal cord researcher Oswald Steward from Virginia to UC Irvine, where he had been named founding director of Reeve-Irvine Research Center. Sharp managed Steward’s research projects as the lab flourished while simultaneously pursuing her doctorate. After graduating, she embarked on a research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, exploring how mental visualization could help people with spinal cord injuries learn to walk better. Working with patients in wheelchairs and those who couldn’t speak due to stroke, she often incorporated movement and dance — both to improve treatment and foster connection. Her work serves as a vital link between the cutting-edge therapies developed in the lab and the delivery of those treatments to complicated and emotional human beings.
“Building rehabilitation programs that people will engage with and find enjoyable is a critical part of recovery as is understanding how employing strategies that integrate more than one modality — for example, layering music and dance — can enhance recovery,” said Aileen Anderson, professor of physical medicine & rehabilitation and director of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, who has worked alongside Sharp for over two decades.
Sharp went from being surrounded by lab coats to leotards in 2014 when the Department of Dance recruited her to fill a faculty opening for a movement scientist. The transition was admittedly tough — from staff to faculty member, from research to teaching and from lab science to arts & science. But the shift to working with dancers on injury prevention, health and lifelong wellness is something she now sees as the best decision she’s made.
“The relationships you can build with students in the dance department are unlike any other experience,” said Sharp. “You’re actually able to mentor them and make wellness suggestions that will help them be successful in all dimensions of their lives.”
Image: Dr. Sharp and Aileen Anderson, professor of physical medicine & rehabilitation and director of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, at the Dance Visions 2024 donor reception. Photo: Jeanine Hill.
Making Moves
In 2023, Sharp took on the role of chair of the dance department — the first clinical research scientist in the position. Anderson points out that “The critical thing to know is that Kelli is a natural leader and always someone to embrace new challenges.”
...Kelli is a natural leader and always someone to embrace new challenges.
Throughout her first year as chair, Sharp has championed building a community and fostering connections across campus.
“We’re creating a more cohesive community that provides space for all dancing artists, whatever that looks like — concert dance, screen dance, social dance,” Sharp said. “And we’re giving students the opportunity to learn how to be multi-modal with the skills they gain from the dance department and giving both our students and faculty the agency to explore what that means to them in their own pathway.”
Image: Dr. Sharp and one of her research teams in the CTSA Motion Capture Studio, where they collected and analyzed motion-capture data to investigate movement patterns, responses to stimuli and movement acceleration. Photo: Will Tee Yang.
CTSA’s dance curriculum spans techniques in jazz, hip hop, ballet and modern dance as well as dance history, wellness and kinesiology courses to round out a dancer’s education. But being at a top-ranked public research university means CTSA students can also study psychology, education, film — almost anything they can imagine. Current dance majors include engineering students and aspiring physicians. When Sharp writes letters of recommendation for dance students, she emphasizes the discipline, time management and communication skills essential to succeed in dance that support success in any professional or academic setting. The department also welcomes students from other majors to explore introductory dance courses.
“These classes are absolutely magical,” said Sharp. “They create a space where students can come in from all different disciplines, create a community where they can express themselves, learn to communicate in new ways and even overcome language barriers.”
Health, Humanities and Arts
At the same time she took the helm of the dance department, Sharp was also named director of UCI’s Center for Medical Humanities — a collaboration across health, humanities and the arts, after serving on the center’s executive board since 2020. Under Sharp’s leadership, the center will continue to drive interdisciplinary work that enhances humanistic approaches to health care and well-being. The center offers funding to support graduate student research related to medical humanities, sponsors speakers and events, and runs a reading group open to students from any department on campus.
“Kelli is very dynamic, and she likes to get things done,” said Amanda Swain, Ph.D., executive director of the Humanities Center, which provides administrative support to the Center for Medical Humanities. “She creates a space of welcome and support in meetings so that the faculty and staff know they can enter as whole people, not just as participants in a business meeting, and then move the group through the agenda of what needs to be taken care of.”
Dance is a form of communication that crosses over into other aspects of humanity and art in a way that’s beautiful and unique to each person.
Sharp continues balancing her own research agenda while leading the dance department and the Center for Medical Humanities. That includes leveraging science to help dancers optimize their bodies and incorporating the arts to assist injured patients in their recovery. But she is careful to point out that arts cannot be reduced to a tool for healing.
“Dance is a form of communication that crosses over into other aspects of humanity and art in a way that’s beautiful and unique to each person,” she said.
Sharp recounts using dance as part of the rehabilitation process with a patient who had lost her ability to speak due to a stroke. Years later, Sharp ran into the patient at a UC Irvine picnic, and her face lighted up. Without words, she rose to her feet and danced with her doctor.
“That’s the magic,” said Sharp. “That’s the arts.”
Image: Dr. Sharp discusses the intersections of dance and translational science to accelerate healing and promote well-being during the Dance Visions 2024 donor reception. Photo: Jeanine Hill.
To learn more about Dr. Sharp and the faculty in the Department of Dance, visit dance.arts.uci.edu. To learn more about the UCI Center for Medical Humanities, visit humanities.uci.edu/centermedicalhumanities.
Please visit our secure direct giving page and make a gift to support CTSA today!