Professional conference with keynote presentations, panels and breakout sessions on body image, RED-D, nutrition and injury in dance.
Body Perspectives: Re-evaluating the Ideal comes to Elmhurst Ballet School on Monday 26 October, a full-day conference run by the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science. The whole thing is built around body image, but not as a matter of appearance. Instead, it looks at it as a factor that affects participation, wellbeing, performance, health and culture in dance.
The day draws on a professional dancer's lived experience of navigating disordered eating in vocational school and early in his career, and on the visceral and emotional reality of relative energy deficiency. Keynote presentations, panels and practical breakout sessions bring together research, healthcare, education and lived experience to cover the psychology of body image, Relative Energy Deficiency in Dance (RED-D), growth and maturation, nutrition and fuelling, injury and recovery, and the role of leadership in shaping healthy dance cultures.
Specific sessions include The Psychology of Body Image, Understanding RED-D, Growing Up in Dance, Body Image, Injury and the Professional Dancer and Nourishing the Dancer. Speaking throughout the day are performance psychologist Dr Hannah Stoyel from the English National Ballet, dancer David Donnelly, REDs expert Karen Sheriff and dancer Eva Maria Sumner.
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It's aimed at dance artists, students, teachers, studio owners, artistic directors, healthcare professionals and researchers, with the idea that you'll leave with evidence-based knowledge, practical tools and concrete actions you can implement immediately. The conference runs from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, with doors opening at 9:00 am, at Elmhurst Ballet School, 249 Bristol Road, Birmingham B5 7UH. Tickets range from £38.62 to £157.80.
