Body Perspectives: Re-evaluating the Ideal
About this Event
This is not a conference about appearance. It is a conference about how body image affects participation, wellbeing, performance, health and culture in dance, and what we can do about it. Attendees leave with evidence-based knowledge, practical tools, meaningful connections, and concrete actions they can implement immediately.
Agenda
🕑: 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Arrival and networking
🕑: 10:00 AM - 10:15 AM
Welcome and Setting the Scene
Host: Erin Sanchez
🕑: 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
Coming Back Home: Reembodying Oneself in the Dance World
Host: David Donnelly
Info: A professional dancer's lived experience navigating disordered eating in vocational school and early on in his professional career. Discussing causation, the visceral and emotional experience of relative energy deficiency, and tools used to find a path toward a healthy relationship with body image and food.
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:30 AM
What Do We Hear: Body Image Across Dance Styles
Host: Romy Ashmore-Hills
Info: Hungry 2 Move is a social enterprise helping improve young people’s body image. Last year we spoke to 339 young dancers over 8 dance styles, in 18 creative workshops, exploring the relationship between dance training and body image through the eyes of young people. They shared their experiences through poetry,creative writing, collage and drawing, spanning community groups, GCSE, A-level, university, and vocational training.
This session shares the key findings, including how pressure around comparison, perfectionism and appearance intensifies in more intensive training environments. Poetry and film bring dancers' own voices into the room. We also ask whose bodies are welcomed and represented in the dance studio and whose aren’t.
🕑: 11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
BREAK
Concurrent sessions - CHOOSE TWO
Info: Concurrent sessions will run from 12:00-12:45, and repeat from 12:45-1:30
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 1: The Psychology of Body Image (recording)
Host: Dr Hannah Stoyel
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 2: Understanding REDs in dancers: Why it matters, and what we can do
Host: Karen Sheriff
Info: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) is a syndrome of impaired physiological and psychological functioning caused by exposure to problematic low energy availability. This session will introduce REDs in the context of dance: what it is, why it matters, and how it can affect both dancer health and performance. We will explore key risk factors and signs, while considering how traditional ideals around the dancer body and expectations within dance environments may contribute to risk, delay recognition, or make it harder for dancers to seek support. Alongside current evidence, a dancer will share their lived experience of REDs, bringing the realities behind the research into the room. The session will consider how we can move beyond simply raising awareness towards creating environments where dancers are appropriately fuelled, supported and able to thrive, challenging the idea that compromising health is an inevitable part of pursuing excellence in dance.
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 3: Growing Up in Dance: Considerations for body image
Host: Dr Siobhan Mitchell
Info: The session will examine how puberty and adolescent development intersect with the unique demands and cultures of dance settings, highlighting what current research tells us about body image, maturation, wellbeing and participation. Drawing on qualitative research with dance teachers and young dancers, alongside insights from the Growing up in Dance (GuiDANCE) project and network, the presentation will explore how maturity timing, changing bodies and dance training environments can shape young people’s experiences.
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 4: Body Image, Injury and the Professional Dancer
Host: Jonny Bucke
Info: Dancers can view pain and body dissatisfaction as normal parts of their art. This can create a risky cycle where negative body image drives overtraining, and physical injury triggers poor mental health.
This session explores the complex interaction between psychological well-being and physical health in professional dance. Jonny will share research on training load & injury in dance and how body image may contribute to this. Attendees will gain an understanding of the strategies a professional ballet company uses to manage these issues, learn some practical tools to spot early warning signs of Relative Energy Deficiency in Dance and hear about lessons learnt from Jonny in this space.
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 5: Nourishing the Dancer: The Impact of Body Image on Food & Fuelling
Host: Mhairi Keil
Info: Body image plays a powerful role in shaping a dancer's relationship with food, influencing what, when, and how much they eat. A dancer's ability to apply nutrition knowledge is often influenced by the balance they feel between pursuing performance and managing the pressures associated with appearance and perceived body ideals.
For some dancers, challenges around fuelling stem from uncertainty about what their body needs to support training, recovery and performance. For others, the picture is more complex. Pressures to look a certain way, comments that connect success to weight or body shape, and environments that place value on appearance all contribute to unhelpful relationships with food.
The consequences can extend far beyond nutrition. Under-fuelling, low energy availability disordered eating and eating disorders can influence health, wellbeing, injury risk, recovery, performance, career longevity and quality of life. Yet these outcomes rarely arise from a single factor.
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Session 6: Your body, your dance: The journey to The Body Project: Dancers
Host: Zoë Harwood
🕑: 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Shaping Dance Culture: Perspectives from Practitioners and Leaders
Info: This panel will bring together perspectives on body image from across the dance ecology. Panellists will be invited to share their experiences and views on how body image affects participation, wellbeing, performance, health and culture in dance, and what we can do to support healthier dance environments and experiences.
🕑: 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Leading Change: Building Supportive Dance Environments and Healthy Dancers
Info: After a day of research, lived experience and honest conversation, this closing session turns insight into action. It's an upbeat, practical and encouraging look at what change can look like, whatever your role, and how to start from where you have the agency, confidence and scope to make a difference. Alongside the speaker's own perspective, you'll hear from organisations already putting positive change into practice, with real examples of what's possible across the dance sector. You'll leave energised, with ideas you can take straight back to your studio, school, company or practice.
🕑: 04:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Networking
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:30 PM
LUNCH
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00 to GBP 157.80
