One Dance UK’s Healthier Dancer Programme is a worldwide leader championing improvement in dancers’ health. It was set up in 1986 and is now a world leader in advocacy, research and delivery of initiatives to promote dancers’ health. One Dance UK has conducted three national enquiries into dancers’ health since 1989, with key findings that 80% of dancers across styles/genres sustain an injury each year and that 91% of dancers report experiencing at least one psychological concern in the same period. To address these findings, the Healthier Dancer Programme is committed to supporting dancers’ health and performance through advocacy, education, further research, and provision of clinical services. The HDP advocates and provides education to support dancers’ performance enhancement and physical, psychological, and social health. Advocacy to government, employers, and other stakeholders includes advocacy campaigns, establishment of industry standards, and providing a forum for a strong, united voice for dancers. Education includes a range of online and downloadable resources and publications, educational workshops and talks, and annual conferences and networking events focussed on safe dance practice, dancers’ health, and dance medicine and science.

 

Erin Sanchez, MSc, is One Dance UK’s Manager of Health, Wellbeing, and Performance. She is a leader, advocate, educator, and applied researcher in the areas of talent development and dance psychology. During her time with One Dance UK, she has led over 700 Healthier Dancer Talks and conferences, reaching more than 22,000 people. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh and holds an MSc in Dance Science and a BA (Hons) in Dance and Sociology. She is an executive group member of Personal Safety for Dance, an international collective working to safeguard professional dancers. She has recently collaborated on a practical text for young dancers and parents called Performance Psychology for Dancers with Prof Dave Collins and Dr Aine MacNamara.

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BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET

Birmingham Royal Ballet Company’s commitment to dancers’ healthcare and wellbeing is well recognized through its investment in its unique and state of the art in-house dance medicine facility, The Jerwood Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Dance Injuries. With a comprehensive multidisciplinary team, it has set a standard for dance healthcare provision in the UK.  It provides services to dancers from outside the Company as well as athletes from several Olympic and professional sporting bodies and will continue to do so under the NIDMS.  Birmingham Royal Ballet Company has demonstrated an on-going commitment to enhancing the understanding of dance injuries through research. In partnership with Prof Matt Wyon, University of Wolverhampton, and Dr John Brooks, Injury Analyst from England Rugby RFU, it has developed an extensive injury audit tool that will form the basis of the National Epidemiological Study with the NIDMS.

 

Nick Allen is the Clinical Director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet Company’s Jerwood Centre. He has a post graduate degree in Sports Medicine and completed his epidemiological based Doctoral dissertation in 2011. His research interests lie in optimising performance through screening, the relationship of vitamin D to injuries and performance, cardiac risk in dancers, and the management of tendinopathies. He has been invited to present at several conferences by various organisations, including the British Association of Sports Medicine, the Royal Society of Medicine, British Rheumatology Society, UK Sport, England Rugby, UK Strength and Conditioning Association and the English Institute of Sport. He is guest lecturer for the M.Sc. in Sports Medicine at Nottingham University and Queen Mary’s University London. He is Birmingham Royal Ballet’s representative on the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science’s NIDMS Partners Committee. Through the Jerwood Centre he has been asked to provide opinions on complex cases for other dancers as well as professional and Olympic athletes. Alongside this he has worked as an external Consultant to Great Britain Gymnastics, England and Great Britain Hockey, and the Lawn Tennis Association’s High-Performance Centre. Prior to moving to Birmingham Royal Ballet, he was Head of Medical Services for a top Premiership rugby club.

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THE ROYAL BALLET

The Royal Ballet was founded in 1931 and awarded its Royal Charter in 1956. It is the largest classical ballet company in the UK and is celebrated worldwide for its exceptional standards of artistry and creativity and the innovative mix of its repertory drawn from an illustrious heritage and compelling canon of new work. The Mason Healthcare Suite was opened at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in the summer of 2013. Named in honour of The Royal Ballet’s former Director, Dame Monica Mason, its vision is to be a world-pioneering, interdisciplinary healthcare team, providing a holistic service in a dancer-focussed, performance-led environment. Headed by Clinical Director, Shane Kelly, the team comprises 18 staff across several disciplines including physiotherapy, sports medicine, Pilates, Gyrotonic, sports science, psychology, nutrition, ballet rehabilitation and soft tissue therapy. The Royal Ballet has a partnership with St Mary’s University in Twickenham, London, to provide in-house strength and conditioning personnel and to continue to develop and progress the area of dance science.

 

Mr Shane Kelly B Phys, M Sports Phys, PG Dip Business and Management has been a physiotherapist working in elite athletics for many years and he has been part of four Olympic cycles with Australia and Great Britain. He was previously Head Physical Therapist with British Athletics where he worked for 10 years. As a practitioner he believes in a multidisciplinary approach, using the best available evidence and working extremely hard with athletes in his care. As a presenter Shane has presented nationally and internationally including to the Football Association, Australian Football League Physiotherapists Association, Royal Society of Medicine and the Sports Massage Association. His clinical interests lie in injury surveillance, soft tissue injury of the lower limb and specialist sports rehabilitation.

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TRINITY LABAN CONSERVATOIRE OF MUSIC AND DANCE

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is one of Europe’s leading vocational dance conservatoires and is internationally known for its research, education and support in dance science and medicine. Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance houses a large Pilates Studio, Injury Clinic and Dance Science Laboratory and already welcomes professional dancers and athletes from outside the conservatoire providing research-informed injury prevention screening, treatment, and consultancy. Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is known internationally as a leader in Dance Science and were the first institution in the world to offer an MSc in Dance Science in 2001, and an MFA in Dance Science in 2016.  

 

Frances Clarke, PhD, is Dean of Dance at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Frances trained at Arts Educational Schools before completing a degree in Dance Theatre at Trinity Laban and a PGCE in Dance at Bedford College of Higher Education. She has an MSc (Distinction) in Dance Science from the University of Wolverhampton and a PhD researching balance and dance performance. Her varied and successful career in dance has encompassed three decades as a performance artist, including a tenure as Artistic Director of Springs Dance Company.  Frances is a member of the Board of DanceHE, and an external examiner and advisor for the University of Oxford, and currently has a long term role as advisor for a Visiting Scholarship in Dance at the University of Cambridge. She holds advisory roles in creative projects, including the BBC, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the Centre for Advanced Training. She has been awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Prior to her work in Higher Education, Frances founded and led a number of secondary and further education dance departments in the UK. Frances’ current research examines balance and performance within dance populations. Other research interests include performance enhancement, the use of performance profiling, imagery and self-talk in dance training and performance, and mentoring for professional teachers and artists.

 

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

The University of Birmingham has a strong dance and sports psychology research culture headed by Professor Joan Duda. The University of Birmingham is the UK’s top institution for Sport and Exercise Science and may be considered the hub of dance psychology research within the UK. There are currently several research projects concerning the psychology of dance taking place at the University of Birmingham in both the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences and the School of Psychology. The University of Birmingham contributes dance psychology expertise to the applied and research endeavors of the NIDMS. Experts from the School of Sport Sciences and School of Psychology are involved in these efforts.

 

Joan Duda is a Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at The University of Birmingham. She is internationally known for her expertise on motivational processes and determinants of adherence and optimal functioning within physical activities as well as the psychological and emotional dimensions of sport, exercise, and dance. She is an experienced mental skills consultant, working with athletes, coaches/instructors, and other performers at all levels. Joan is Director of a large multi-national EC-funded project which aims to promote quality engagement in youth sport (www.empoweringcoaching.co.uk), exemplifying her interests in developing, implementing and evaluating theory-based interventions in healthy and clinical populations across the lifespan. Professor Duda also has extensive experience providing psychological support to dancers at all levels and within numerous genres.

 

UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON

The University of Wolverhampton is one of the world’s leading dance science and medicine research establishments.  Under the direction of Prof Matthew Wyon, research at Wolverhampton has been at the forefront of dance medicine and science since 2000.  It has a strong culture of post-graduate provision offering an MSc Dance Science and research degrees in dance science and medicine.  It has over 650sqm of laboratory space with a wide range of diagnostic and interventional equipment. The University of Wolverhampton already has strong working and research relationships with Birmingham Royal Ballet, Royal National Orthopedic Hospital and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance as well as other institutions in Europe and the Americas.

 

Matthew Wyon PhD, is a Professor in Exercise Physiology at the University of Wolverhampton, UK.  In this role, he is the Director of Studies for a number of dance science and medicine doctoral candidates, the Director of the Exercise Science Laboratories and the CQC Manager for the HealthScan (DEXA) service.  He was the President of International Association for Dance Medicine & Science between 2015-17 and is a founding partner of the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science (NIDMS), UK. He is the scientific lead for NIDMS and set up and guides the Institutes physiological testing screen for dancers. He has worked with numerous dance companies as an applied physiologist and strength and conditioning coach.  He has collaborated with a number of pre-professional dance training institutions to develop and programme their curriculums. He has published extensively on performance enhancement and injury epidemiology for dancers including British Association of Sport and Exercise Science Guidelines for testing dancers, Strength and Conditioning for Dancers, and Periodization: a framework for dance training.

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FOUNDING NIDMS PARTNERS

 

Roger Wolman is a Consultant in Rheumatology and SEM and a founding partner of NIDMS having been medical advisor to One Dance (Dance UK) for over 15 years. He set up the first NHS/NIDMS Dance Medicine clinic at the RNOH which moved to the Royal London Hospital/QMUL from where he now works as Reader in the Department of Sport and Exercise Medicine. His clinical work includes treating dancers. His research interests include bone health, vitamin D and Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). He was awarded the One Dance Jane Attenborough Award for outstanding contribution to Dance for 2019 and in 2020 was appointed honorary Professor at University of Wolverhampton.

 

Professor Emma Redding originally trained as a contemporary dancer performing for Tranz Dance Company in Hungary and for Rosalind Newman in Hong Kong. Emma is the Director of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). Before this she was Head of Dance Science at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, England.. Emma has played a major role in developing dance science as a recognised field of study at university level, through her research, and through teaching internationally, as a founding partner of the National Institute for Dance Medicine and Science and a past-member of the Board of Directors and Past-President of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. Emma teaches Exercise Physiology and Contemporary Dance Technique at Trinity Laban alongside her management and research work. She supervises undergraduate and graduate student projects as well as PhDs in areas such as dancer health, physiology, talent development, dance training and creativity. She has led and co-led several large cross-institutional projects including most recently a Conservatoires UK study into musician health funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a creativity and mental imagery study, in collaboration with Plymouth University and Coventry University, UK. Emma serves as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Psychology and member of the Editorial Board of Research in Dance Education.

 

Helen Laws is an experienced dance manager who was instrumental in shaping One Dance UK’s Healthier Dancer Programme; responding to the needs of the dance sector and spearheading initiatives that have led to improved education, knowledge, specialist healthcare provision and dance science support for dancers. Helen helped to bring together the UK’s leaders in the field to form the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science in 2012, establishing the first NHS dance injury clinics, for which she was recognised in the 2014 Evening Standard's 1000 most influential Londoners, alongside Caroline Miller. She is the author of Fit to Dance 2 – The report of the second national inquiry into dancers’ health and injury in the UK. In her various roles Helen has programmed and delivered conferences, produced publications and managed networks for dance professionals including choreographers, educators, managers, dance scientists and healthcare practitioners, encouraging communication across disciplines. She served as a member of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science board, 2005-2013 and holds a BA(Hons) Degree in Dance (with French) and a Diploma in Arts Management from Roehampton University. She is currently a Postgraduate Researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE). Helen’s research interests lie around the health, wellbeing and sustainability of careers for dance professionals. She is particularly interested in identifying training methods, environmental and socio-political factors which are conducive to dancers enjoying longer, healthier, fulfilling careers, less impacted by injury and poor working conditions or status.

 

CLINICAL PARTNERS:

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The clinical partners are integral in the establishment of further NHS dance injury clinics and support the ongoing work and mission of the NIDMS partners.

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QUEEN ELIZABETH HOSPITAL BIRMINGHAM (Clinic launched December 2013)

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is recognised as one of the leading teaching hospitals in Europe and has an international reputation for quality of care, clinical training and research. The hospital is run by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) and delivers care in the UK’s newest and largest single site hospital.

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UHB provides direct clinical services to over 800,000 patients every year, serving a regional, national and international population. It provides care across the full range of clinical specialities and has forged relationships with hospitals in many different countries to provide training and share clinical expertise.

A dance injury clinic is delivered within the hospital’s Sport and Exercise Medicine Service, led by Locum Consultant in Sport and Exercise Medicine, Dr Kim Gregory and Consultant Physiotherapist, Emma Batchelor.

 

ROYAL UNITED HOSPITAL BATH (Clinic launched September 2014)

The Royal United Hospital Bath has one of the longest running Sports Injuries Clinics in the Country. In conjunction with NIDMS and the Dance Again Foundation, this service will now provide multidisciplinary and expert care for the treatment and rehabilitation of dance injuries. This service will enable dancers in the South West of England to receive expert care within the NHS.  The experienced multidisciplinary team have worked together for many years in the treatment of Sports Injuries. The team includes Dr Tim Jenkinson, Consultant Rheumatologist at the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases; Dr Kevin Gruffydd-Jones, a General Practitioner with a specialist interest in Sports Injuries; and Mr Tristan Barton, an Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal United Hospital, with a specialist interest in Foot and Ankle Surgery and Sports Injuries to the lower limb.  

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MILE END HOSPITAL AND QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY LONDON (Clinic launched January 2019)

The Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine, part of Queen Mary, University of London, runs the oldest Sport and Exercise Medicine course in the UK.  Both M.Sc, and intercalated B.Sc degrees are offered here, and leading figures in the field of SEM and allied subjects lecture on these courses.  This includes modules on dance medicine led by Dr Manuela Angioi who sits on the research committee of International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) and has published numerousstudies in the field of MSK injury and physical fitness of professional and pre professional dancers.

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 There is an extensive multi-disciplinary team that supports the NHS clinic that is held at Mile End Hospital, with under- and post-grad students taking an active part in patient care.  Both the Royal London and Newham Hospitals are part of a direct referral system to this clinic for acute dance injuries (less than 72 hours old) and dancers are seen and assessed by a highly experienced medical team including Dr Ian Beasley, Dr Nikos Malliaropoulos, and Dr Ritan Mehta, who are all well versed in dealing with performers at all levels.  This setting is also the basis of the clinical teaching taking place at the Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine.

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SCREENING PARTNERS:

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The screening partners provide the Musculoskeletal and fitness screening aspect of the Performance Optimisation Package, offered in partnership with One Dance UK.  Screenings are also offer at NIDMS partners Birmingham Royal Ballet, University of Wolverhampton and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

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UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH (Screening centre launched March 2018)

The University of Edinburgh is one of the world’s leading research universities, ranked fourth in the UK for research power. Today, it is becoming increasingly important to the holistic nature and global development of all Dance performance and training that there are professionals within dance science and education that are appropriately resourced, challenged and inspired to take on their own frontiers and develop new ones. In 2009, The University of Edinburgh launched the first postgraduate degree MSc in Dance Science and Education in Scotland and in 2015, an optional accredited teaching pathway (QTs) was added to this degree. The principal aim of this Master's programme is to provide a foundation in science that can underpin all forms of dance training and educate the development of dance as an art form. The programme has been carefully developed to focus on the scientific that is directly relevant to the process and practices involved in optimising: dance training, dance education and dance performance. Wendy Timmons is the director of the MSc Dance Science and Education programme and is a classical ballet teacher; her research focuses on hypermobility within the dance environment and injury prevention.  Wendy sits on the editorial board for the Research in Dance Education journal and is vice chair for the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland. Mark Pace, is a Teaching Fellow on the MSc Dance Science and Education programme and a former professional soloist dancer with Australian Ballet, Bejart Ballet, Bayerisher Staatsballett and Ballet de l’Opera National Ballet du Rhin.  

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TAYLOR PHYSIOTHERAPY (Screening centre launched March 2018)

Bill Taylor has been a member of One Dance’s Healthier Dancer advisory panel for over ten years and delivers lectures and workshops for MSc Dance Science and Education programme at the University of Edinburgh. Bill has been working in Scotland for over twenty years with a wide range of dancers and dance companies both nationally and internationally. Bill Taylor is consultant physiotherapist at Scottish Ballet and Bill and his colleague, Stewart Scott, provide support for the company at Tramway in Glasgow. Bill and Stewart have also worked with Scotland’s contemporary dance company, Scottish Dance Theatre, for the past fifteen years providing physiotherapy support for the dancers. Taylor physiotherapy work closely with Dance Base, the National Centre for Dance in Edinburgh and many of the dance and performing arts colleges in Scotland. Each year Taylor physiotherapy provide valuable support for a wide range of freelance dancers, circus performers, aerialists and physical theatre artists during the festival period, they have also supported a long list of West End touring companies when they visit Scotland.

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EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS:

 

SAFE IN DANCE INTERNATIONAL (Agreement signed October 2014)

Safe in Dance International (SiDI) was formed in 2013 by Maggie Morris and Matthew Tomkinson when IADMS invited the company to lead and manage the international healthy dance practice initiative.  SiDI initially worked in agreement with the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS) on the Healthy Dance Practice Certificate aiming to further IADMS' mission to “enhance the health, well-being, training and performance of dance by cultivating educational, medical and scientific excellence”. The Healthy Dance Practice Certificate is an independent venture under Safe in Dance International (SiDI). The International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) supports the principles underlying this certificate.

SiDI believes that it is the right of everyone involved in dance to study, rehearse, train, perform and teach in a safe and supportive environment. Safe in Dance International's aim is to support, develop, encourage and endorse the implementation of Healthy Dance Practice world-wide.

In October 2014 SiDI signed an agreement with the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science (NIDMS) to work together to promote healthy dance practice through their respective educational programmes.

 

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