Zakim Center meets challenge, tops goal with musical event
Tezz Yancey (center) relaxes after the show with attendees. (Bart Blumberg photo)
What happens when you plan a major fundraiser around a nationally touring musical, and the tour is canceled less than a month before your event? For staff and friends of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies, the response to this recent dilemma was swift — and successful.
On May 8, about 200 center supporters enjoyed "Tezz Yancey's Rhythmic Journey," an hour-long music and dance review at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in downtown Boston. The crowd-pleasing show carried attendees through the jazz and swing eras right up to modern rock-n-roll, disco, and funk, as Yancey and his polished contingent of singer/dancers and musicians deftly drummed home their theme that music can heal the soul.
In this case, it also raised more than $100,000 for the Zakim Center, which provides a wide range of integrative (or complementary) therapies such as acupuncture, massage, Reiki, music therapy, and nutritional consults to patients and their families.
Although some in the medical community remain skeptical, such offerings have grown in acceptance as research at Dana-Farber and elsewhere has shown their efficacy as an adjunct to traditional treatment.
"These therapies are helping improve the quality of life for cancer patients while they undergo surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or other potentially curative treatment, as well as during palliative care," Zakim Center Medical Co-Director David Rosenthal, MD, told attendees at a pre-event reception.
Rosenthal had just returned from China, where he attended a meeting of the Society of Integrative Oncology, at which hundreds of international colleagues shared their research findings that non-traditional treatments can reduce pain, nausea, fatigue, and other side effects associated with cancer or cancer therapy.
"The entire conference was about combining the best of Western medicine with the best of Eastern medicine," Rosenthal added. "Acupuncture, something that they've been practicing for the past five millennia, is something we're studying and researching every day at the Zakim Center."
The show featured singing as well as dancing. (Bart Blumberg photo)
The Zakim Center's first major fundraiser since its 2000 inception was originally going to include tickets to the May 8 performance at the Cutler Majestic of "Love, Janis," a musical chronicling the life of rock legend Janis Joplin. When the show's tour was canceled in mid-April, however, the committee organizing the Zakim event found a new performer from within its own ranks: Yancey, the Boston-bred godson of committee member Maya Balle.
An accomplished singer, dancer, and actor, Yancey created "A Rhythmic Journey" especially for the center, and then quickly assembled a group of musicians and singer/dancers to learn it. Officials at the Cutler Majestic and Emerson College (which oversees the theater) graciously offered exclusive use of the theater for the same date; although the hundreds of people who had already purchased tickets for "Love, Janis," were offered refunds, very few requested them, and the performance wound up doubling its original fundraising goal.
Among those enjoying the evening were Lenny and Joyce Zakim's children (left to right) Deena, Shari, and Josh. (Dana Bisbee photo)
This teamwork and goodwill was in keeping with the spirit of the Zakim Center and its namesake, former Dana-Farber patient Lenny Zakim. Zakim, director of the New England Region Anti-Defamation League, embraced integrative therapies during his own treatment for multiple myeloma, both for the way they made him feel and the sense of empowerment they gave him.
When it opened, a year after his 1999 death, the Zakim Center had one room and one practitioner working one day a week," recalls former executive director Cynthia Medeiros, currently Dana-Farber's director of patient care service administration. Today, it treats hundreds of patients and family members annually at Dana-Farber and its care partners — Children's Hospital Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Faulkner Hospital.
Co-Chairs for the event (left to right): Linda Schwartz, Joyce Zakim, Carol Kanin. (Dana Bisbee photo)
"Lenny had his acupuncture in Arlington, his massage therapy in Sudbury, and Qigong with our son Josh at our home in Newton," Joyce Zakim, his widow, told attendees at the May 8 event, which she co-chaired with Linda Schwartz and Carol Kanin. "He felt strongly that these therapies should be available to patients close to their oncologists at Dana-Farber. He would be thrilled to see what the Zakim Center has become."
— Saul Wisnia
saul_wisnia@dfci.harvard.edu
