The Royal Ballet School has collaborated with the International Youth Dancer Health Alliance (IYDHA) to share its passion for dancer well-being globally and showcase its existing work on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport and Dance (RED-S) education.
With a well-established School Healthcare Programme already in place, The Royal Ballet Faculty launched its personal RED-S week final 12 months. Head of Healthcare Wayne Kitchener shares that there was an actual “progressive tempo of studying during the last eight years on the Faculty,” serving to to arrange younger dancers for the trade and to construct wholesome careers.
March this 12 months noticed the right alternative for The Royal Ballet Faculty to hitch up with different main dance coaching establishments, American Ballet Theatre, Australian Ballet Faculty, Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera, Canada’s Nationwide Ballet Faculty, Codarts College of the Arts, English Nationwide Ballet Faculty, Palucca Hochschule Fűr Tanz Dresden, Royal Danish Ballet Faculty, Victorian Faculty of the Arts Secondary Faculty, and Zurich College of the Arts on the inaugural Youth Dancer Well being Consciousness Week 2025: Relative Power Deficiency in Sport and Dance.
RED-S is a syndrome that sees a decline in athletic efficiency and well being in athletes resulting from inadequate gasoline by way of meals.
The week-long digital occasion, March 3-7, introduced collectively main worldwide dance faculties, healthcare specialists, and dance educators on a shared mission to foster a more healthy and extra sustainable future for younger dancers, which focussed on RED-S, a major and sometimes missed well being problem affecting pre-professional dancers.
The occasion’s keynote tackle featured Karen Sheriff, former Head of Healthcare of The Royal Ballet Faculty, a number one advocate for dancer well being and Govt Director of Challenge RED-D; Dr Jo Larking, sports activities and train drugs advisor; and Steven McRae, Principal Dancer at The Royal Ballet. It additionally showcased three on-demand webinars designed for dancers, mother and father and creative employees, and an interactive Q&A Session, and put up occasion video response session from panellists is obtainable on the IYDHA YouTube Channel.
“It was good to be a part of it,” Kitchener says. “We do numerous work with the scholars on this topic all year long, and each tutorial 12 months, there will likely be one week dedicated to RED-S Consciousness.”
Now taught in The Royal Ballet Faculty’s syllabus in hopes of prolonging dancers’ careers and making dance coaching secure, sustainable, and enjoyable, Kitchener mentioned that the youthful dancers on the college have been receptive to it.
“I really assume the youthful technology of dancers now have a a lot higher curiosity of their well being and well-being and total well being care,” says Kitchener. “They’re engaged and explorative about understanding extra about what information can inform us. They’ve a a lot higher curiosity in that space now, which is nice and can probably result in profession longevity.”
The theme of the Worldwide Youth Dancer Well being Consciousness Week modifications annually, with this 12 months’s give attention to RED-S coming at time.
“On the entire, there in all probability is a rise [in RED-S],” Kitchener notes. However as with numerous these items, when you’ve obtained a higher consciousness by way of higher schooling, an even bigger understanding round prevention, and a rise in screening for it as effectively, i.e. searching for it extra globally in several methods, that’s why the burden of it’s increased than what it was beforehand.”
He continues, “Anybody can have a RED-S difficulty. It happens throughout the spectrum as a result of it begins with low vitality availability. On a easy degree, what you’re placing in doesn’t match your bodily output, so simple as that. That may occur in an older dancer simply as a lot as it may possibly a youthful dancer. The problem with youthful dancers is that they’re bodily rising and maturing; due to this fact, the affect could possibly be higher. And, as a result of they’re bodily rising and maturing, their danger of bone harm is increased.”
The partnership additionally helps battle the ‘normalising’ of overworking that may be related to the dance world.
“There’s an actual normalised tradition, in fact, round excessive workload, coaching, hours, fatigue in ballet,” Kitchener says. “However what we’ve tried to do by way of schooling and thru some initiatives is to dispel that. One factor we do on the college is to watch fatigue. We’ve obtained a group of children who’re monitored for his or her bodily fatigue utilizing a bounce take a look at. Now, that’s solely a small, piloted group proper now, however as a result of that’s created a great deal of curiosity amongst the remainder of the 12 months group, they’ve really come and requested extra questions on it and needed to be concerned as a result of there’s a degree of curiosity.”
By partaking within the Worldwide Youth Dancer Well being Alliance, The Royal Ballet Faculty hopes to share its data and work alongside different main organisations from all over the world to foster a more healthy and extra sustainable future for younger dancers.
By Jamie Physique of Dance Informa.
