Dance in post-treatment cancer survivorship: an integrative narrative review of evidence, practice, and embodied agency

BACKGROUND: Cancer survivorship involves physical, psychological, social, and existential disruptions that often persist beyond clinical treatment. While conventional rehabilitation targets functional recovery, there is an increasing need for holistic approaches that address the lived experience of the survivor. This review examines dance as an emerging modality within survivorship care, exploring its capacity to support reclaiming embodied agency. METHODS: An integrative narrative review was conducted, drawing on and interpreting quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based studies of dance delivered after the completion of acute oncological treatment, published between 2005 and 2025. Twenty-eight primary papers and twelve secondary or contextual sources were included, allowing a theoretically informed analysis that synthesizes clinical outcomes and lived experience. RESULTS: Findings across the reviewed literature report improvements in mood, fatigue, mobility, and body image, alongside enhanced social connection and quality of life, although most studies are small and heterogeneous in design. Both structured dance/movement therapy and creative, community-based practices were reported to foster reconnection with altered bodies, shared resilience, and renewed meaning. Read through an embodied agency lens, these accounts suggest that dance engages survivorship as a relational and aesthetic process of reconstruction. CONCLUSIONS: By integrating aesthetic, relational, and rehabilitative dimensions, dance appears promising for holistic survivorship care. Drawing on phenomenology, medical anthropology, and dance studies, the review contributes to debates within arts and health about how creative practices support survivorship. We highlight dance as a distinctive modality bridging rehabilitation and artistic practice, through which survivors may renegotiate embodied agency and reimagine their lives beyond cancer.