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Eating disorders and dancers
How can dance teachers recognise students who might have an eating disorder, and how might they help them to acknowledge and deal with this complex and debilitating condition?
Stretching rules for dancers
Recommendations for what you should and should not do when you are stretching, and some different stretching techniques.
First aid for dancers
Simple first aid advice that is particularly relevant to dancers and dance teachers, whether in a social, recreational or professional environment.
Safe spaces for dance
A checklist of environmental considerations that you should be aware of before you teach a dance class, lead a social dance event or give a dance performance.
Healthy bones for female dancers
This information is especially for young female dancers who can do much to prevent or minimise a common condition called osteoporosis by eating plenty of calcium during the growth years.
What other forms of insurance do dance professionals need?
As well as Public Liability insurance and Professional Indemnity insurance, dance professionals may need to consider Personal Accident insurance and Business insurance.
What is Public Liability insurance?
Public Liability insurance covers you and your business for losses or damage a third party suffers (or claims to have suffered) as a result of your business activities.
Safe Dance report 3
This report documents the recurrence of injury in Australia professional dancers. It follows the work of Tony Geeves which began 10 years earlier .
Safe Dance report 2
The second Safe Dance report presents research into adolescent health issues during intensive dance training.
Safe Dance report 1
This project was the first of its kind undertaken in Australia. The report is supported by statistics and extensive consultation with dance and health professionals.
Publications
Australian guidelines for teaching dance
The Australian guidelines for teaching dance outlines codes of ethical and professional behaviour and emphasises the importance of safe dance practice and teaching methodology.
We designed it to help dance teachers and students by providing minimum standards, and by suggesting ways teachers can maintain or upgrade their teaching skills. Parents can use the Guidelines to help choose a dancing school or group for their children.
Professional business practice factsheets
This information is designed to help dance teachers who are small business owners.
Safe dance factsheets
Information to help teachers make sure that students are dancing safely and responsibly.
Professional business practice for studio teachers
These recommendations include ethical, legal and professional standards identified by the dance teaching profession in Australia. We outline business practice including your rights and legal obligations.
Safe dance practice
These safe dance practice guidelines include how to set up a safe learning environment, what makes a practice or performance venue safe, the importance of cater for physical different bodies and abilities, how movements might impact on the body, and simple injury prevention and management strategies.
Safe Dance reports
Safe Dance reports volumes 1, 2 and 3 contain research into the areas of injury prevention and management, body therapies, rehearsal and management practices.
News / Blog / Press Releases / Events
IADMS meeting in Singapore
The International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS) will hold its 22nd annual meeting in Singapore, 25–28 October 2012
The Annual Meeting provides an interesting mixture of medical symposia on issues affecting dancers, dance and pedagogical research, movement sessions by somatic practitioners and dance instructors, as well as many opportunities for both formal and informal dialogue on various issues affecting dancers and the profession of dance.
Highlights of this year’s meeting include:
- clinical symposium on the surgery and rehabilitation of a spinal cord injury which resulted in the dancer returning to a performance career
- new strategies for stretching and strengthening in a variety of movement sessions
- psychological and nutritional information for maximizing health and performance for dancers.
For more information go the IADMS website
National Health & Arts policy forum
It's exciting to have been invited to a national Arts & Health Policy Forum at Parliament House in Canberra on 27 June. The forum has been supported by the Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean and the Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, following a decision last November to develop a national arts and health policy framework.
This will be a great opportunity to help policy makers understand the breadth and impact of arts and health practice and to shape their ideas about future policy.
Broader participation will be invited via online broadcast featuring a live audio stream, twitter feed and digital showcase of arts and health stories across the country.
The organising partners are the Arts and Health Foundation, the National Rural Health Alliance and Regional Arts Australia.
Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts 2011
The Harold Mitchell Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts has just been released by the Minister for the Arts as part of the wider consultation about the new National Cultural Policy.
The Mitchell review recommends several ideas that might help attract new donors to the arts, noting that “The limited funds available to many arts organisations creates a situation where they cannot afford dedicated staff to drive a strategic approach to fund-raising”.
Mitchell also recommends the merging of the Australian Business Arts Foundation with Artsupport Australia “under the auspices of a new body with responsibility for all private sector support for the arts in Australia”.
Today is also your last opportunity to respond to the Australia Council review, another important part of the Cultural Policy consultation process.
Tanja Liedtke digital archive
In news that will particularly interest Australian dance researchers, educators and students, the Tanja Liedtke Foundation has announced that it has created the Tanja Liedtke digital archive, now freely accessible to anyone who is interested in knowing more about Tanja’s life and work.
The Foundation has also announced that one of Tanja's works, construct, has been voted by The Monthly magazine as one of 20 Australian masterpieces, across all art forms, since the year 2000. The work was declared the masterpiece in the category of contemporary dance, a great achievement!
Dance support organisations meet in Paris
Last week 25 dance support organisations met in Paris for three days of talks, presentations and performances. As we are members of the World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific, we had also organised for WDA people to provide this mainly European group with more information about its activities.
These annual meetings are an opportunity to share dance support strategies, ideas and visions for the future. We were invited on the first day to share this year’s achievements, a challenge for many European organisations that face severe funding cuts. Despite funding difficulties all round, presentations were inspirational and visionary for dance, and we came away with many ideas for collaborations and future planning with now-familiar colleagues such as Madeline Ritter and Ingo Diehl (Germany), Caroline Miller (Dance UK) and our French colleagues Agnès Wasserman and Frédéric Moreau.
Delegates at Paris meeting of dance support organisations. Ingo Diehl (centre) is the Tanzplan Deutschland Educational Program Director.