Date: Monday 30 April 2012    Venue:  Royal Society of Medicine, London W1G 0AE

The event is a Dance UK, Healthier Dancer Programme Conference.

I am looking forward to attending this conference. The text below about the conference is copied from the promotional email sent out.

This conference will aid the dancer and their multidisciplinary support team to identify and encourage healthy behaviours and deal effectively with disordered eating patterns when necessary. It advocates a multidisciplinary approach, with presentations from leading artistic directors, health professionals, and support staff in addition to personal insights from dancers.

Speakers will include: Dame Monica Mason DBE, Artistic Director, Royal Ballet; Lauren Cuthbertson, Principal Dancer, Royal Ballet; and Huw Goodwin, Research Associate, Loughborough University Centre for Research into Eating Disorders (LUCRED).

Dancers are expected to train hard and perform excellently. This, in turn, puts particular nutritional demands on the body and psychological demands on the person. This conference will explore the technical, aesthetic, social, and personal demands on the dancer. It will ask how these demands can be managed to achieve optimal health and performance, rather than disordered eating.

Sessions include:

• The technical and aesthetic demands of dance and whether they are realistic and healthy for dancers; to be debated by a panel of artistic directors including David Nixon, Artistic Director Northern Ballet and Ann Sholem, Artistic Director National Dance Company Wales.

• A panel of dancers and educational staff will explore experiences of disordered eating in educational and professional environments.

• Recommendations for identifying and treating disordered eating.

• Recommendations for best nutritional practice, education, and the prevention of disordered eating.

• The day will finish with a discussion around the role of the multidisciplinary team working with dancers, including recognising and managing maladaptive strategies and supporting dancers’ ultimate goals of optimal health and performance.