Elmhurst School for Dance’s new Health and Wellbeing Centre is creating new waves in developing professional dancers for the industry. Elmhurst is the oldest vocational school in the UK, yet is constantly striving to bring a holistic approach to students’ all-round health and wellbeing during the intensity of full time dance training, helping students to develop into independent and collaborative artists.
The school currently offers students access to a range of health services, including doctors, physiotherapy, nutrition advice, strength and conditioning, and is now building the new centre in order to acquire an on-site state of the art Health and Wellbeing Centre. This facility will enable an even greater programme of health and wellbeing services within a purpose built environment, to develop the Elmhurst ethos. Through added relaxation classes, individual nutritional advice and counselling alongside strength and individual conditioning programmes, the new Centre will become the first of its kind in the UK within vocational training. It will create a closer working relationship between healthcare, artistic and boarding staff, emphasising the desired holistic approach to health and wellbeing in dance.
Elmhurst is acutely aware that classical ballet training has always put huge demands on the bodies of those who choose it as their vocation, and the school aims to understand as much as possible about the negative impact of these demands on dancers’ bodies and how that impact can be minimised through the new centre. It will also focus on the particular issues of dancers’ bone mineral density and posture, and consequently low bone mineral density and osteoporosis among female professional dancers.
A fitness suite at Elmhurst will complement the new centre, acknowledging the additional demands of modern dance repertoire on dancers; Elmhurst’s graduates are expected to have exceptional fitness and stamina levels in order to succeed. The onsite fitness suite includes a wide range of cardiovascular and weight-training equipment.