ResDance Series 7: Episode 6: Researching the nexus between dance education and dance science with
Elsa Urmston

In this episode, Elsa shares insight into her journey as an educator and researcher and how these continue to inform her interests in professional practice within various educational contexts and settings. We discuss the research
methodologies, approaches and methods employed in her PhD research and how such experiences have allowed her to embrace other ways of seeing and understanding. Elsa reflects upon the value she places on embodied knowledge, the foregrounding of the subjective embodied person and the importance of play in helping to translate ideas and foster opportunities for open dialogue. Throughout the episode, Elsa highlights the need to de-centre knowledge to avoid the siloing of understanding in research and to foreground others lived experience.

Elsa is an independent dance educator and researcher based
in the UK, having worked in the arts and especially dance for the last 30 years or so. Her interests span performance and training, vocational education and pedagogy, community practice, dance science and the impact of arts participation on people’s lives. The themes of professional practice, and the interplay of pedagogical encounters on participants’ experiences are common threads sewn into her work. Elsa has recently completed her PhD in Education at the University of Exeter, exploring the implications of
periodisation on dance education, pedagogy, and practice.

Elsa works as a teacher/lecturer in Higher Education (HE), and consults on educational change, developing curricula with a number of institutions and organisations. She has written several dance HE degree programmes, and recently supported London Contemporary Dance School’s adoption of periodisation as part of their curriculum development. She continues to advise on the embedding of dance science education throughout their offer, whilst also
contributing to longitudinal research focussing on students’ health and wellbeing, and facilitating the teachers’ learning exchange programme at the School.Much of Elsa’s work is also as an evaluator, exploring dance participation and its impact on people’s lives from social, psychological and
health perspectives with companies such as Made by Katie Green, English National Ballet and Dance Umbrella. She is also a mentor for early-and mid-career dance artists, particularly those for whom teaching and dance education are part of their wider portfolio of work.

Elsa has held a number of leadership positions including as Dance Educators’ Committee Chair at the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science; Expert Panel Member for One Dance UK’s Children and Young
People’s programmes; and External Examiner of a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes both in the UK and internationally. Now, Elsa is Vice Chair and trustee of the Essex-based Dance Network Association.

Website: https://www.elsaurmston.com/

Photo credit: Urmy Urmston

Other details:

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-elsa-urmston

Instagram: @elsaurmston

X:@ElsaUrmston

Please share this episode with students, educators, practitioners, performers, and interdisciplinary researchers curious to learn more about dance
research in action.