Topline
Celine Dion announced Friday she has canceled her upcoming world tour as the five-time Grammy Award winning singer tries to “build back strength” following her diagnosis with stiff-person syndrome, a rare muscular disorder affecting less than 5,000 people in the U.S., but with no known cure.
Canadian singer Celine Dion canceled her remaining 2023 and 2024 tour dates Friday morning, … [+]
Key Facts
Dion, a Canadian pop and ballad singer known for singing “The Power of Love” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” and whose hit “My Heart Will Go On” from the 1997 blockbuster Titanic became an instant best-seller, announced in an Instagram post she canceled all remaining 2023 and 2024 dates in her Courage World Tour.
In her announcement, Dion said the tour dates, which run through April 2024, will be canceled “until I’m ready to be back on stage again” and tickets for the 42 shows she had planned in Europe will be refunded.
The cancelation comes nearly five months after Dion first postponed 2023 tour dates when she announced she had been diagnosed with the disorder, an autoimmune disorder that affects the brain and spinal cord, causing people to develop “abnormal, often hunched over postures” and on occasion hindering people’s ability to walk, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Stiff-person syndrome (SPS) affects roughly less than 5,000 people in the U.S., according to Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, with symptoms including stiff muscles in the torso, arms and legs, and sensitivity to touch, noise and emotional distress, which can trigger muscle spasms in diagnosed people.
Scientists have not determined the specific cause of SPS, though researchers believe it could be the result of an autoimmune reaction in which the immune system attacks a protein inside the body called glutamic acid decarboxylase, which makes an acid that regulates motor neurons, according to Yale Medicine.
There is also no cure for SPS, though treatment often includes sedatives, steroids and muscle relaxants, coupled with immunotherapy and physical therapy.
Surprising Fact
SPS occurs twice as frequently in women than men, and is often associated with autoimmune diseases including type-1 diabetes, pernicious anemia, thyroiditis and vitiligo, as well as people with breast, lung, kidney, colon and thyroid cancer.
Key Background
Dion won her first Grammy Award in 1992 for her duet with Peabo Bryson in “Beauty and the Beast” from the Disney animated classic. She went on to win seven Billboard Music Awards and receive 12 Grammy nominations, in addition to her five Grammys wins. In April 2019, she launched the Courage World Tour, performing 52 concerts in North America before abruptly pausing it at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. While the tour was on break, Dion starred in her first film, a romantic comedy called Love Again, and released five original songs for its soundtrack. She had planned to resume the tour on August 26 with a string of shows in Amsterdam, Paris, Copenhagen and Antwerp, Belgium, before heading to Norway, Sweden and Finland, and had also planned 23 shows throughout Europe in 2024, starting in Prague and ending in London.
Further Reading
Celine Dion Diagnosed With Stiff-Person Syndrome (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/05/26/what-is-stiff-person-syndrome-celine-dion-cancels-tour-over-rare-muscular-disorder/