Vocational Dance Training: An opportunity to thrive or a risk factor for young people's mental health?

For talented young dancers, vocational dance programmes are the first step in fulfilling a dream of dancing professionally (Blevins et al., 2020). Once accepted through audition, training aims to prepare dancers for the professional world, but it comes with unique stressors. For example, dance students must manage intense physical training regimes and the psychological pressures of the dance industry such as technical perfection, striving for the ideal dance physique, and competitive environments (Cumming & Duda, 2012). If dancers do not manage these stressors effectively, they risk jeopardising their wellbeing and ability to lead healthy dance careers and lives. Indeed, research highlights the prevalence of mental health concerns within this population (van Winden et al.,2020; Cumming & Duda, 2012), which demonstrates the importance of understanding their unique experiences and ways in which they can be supported.

Characteristics commonly found within the dance population are resilience, perfectionism, and passion (Kveton-Bohnert, 2017; Padham & Aujla, 2014). These qualities are considered positive attributes to have in competitive sports and arts for success, but they may also have negative consequences. For example, whilst resilience can help the dancer to deal with rejection and competition, continuing to dance when injured due to fear of being labelled 'weak' or 'not resilient enough' can have negative consequences for mental and physical health (Pentith & McEvilly, 2018). Although passion is important for artistry, restrictive behaviours due to obsessive passion are associated with disordered eating (Padham & Aujla, 2014). There is a need to better understand the characteristics dance students possess, clarify what qualities and skills support them to thrive, and which can risk their wellbeing.

There are skills associated with positive wellbeing that have been introduced to the dance student population recently, such as mindfulness (Blevins et al., 2022), but many more to explore that could have a positive impact. For example, the introduction of self-compassion strategies, which has been done in elite gymnastics students (Rodriguez & Ebbeck,2015). Early psychological intervention has been identified as a key factor in mental health longevity in athletes (Purcell et al., 2019), but within a vocational dance student population, it remains limited. A psychological intervention during training years that aims to educate and support the dance student as they navigate the stressors within their field could improve their mental health and wellbeing. Given the amount of research identifying the risks to psychological health that vocational dance training can have, there is an opportunity to explore new ways of supporting vocational dance students through psychological intervention.

The project aims to answer the following research questions:
1) What are the psychological characteristics of vocational dance students?
2) How do these characteristics influence dance students' performance and well-being?
3) Could we train dance students to develop characteristics that would optimise their performance and well-being?

The project is significant in light of extensive research suggesting that dancers are at high risk of developing mental health issues during training years (Clements, 2021; Blevins et el., 2020), but also the research within other elite sports that outlines possible protective factors that have not yet been explored within dance (Kuettell & Larsen, 2020). By focusing on helping aspiring dancers in vocational schools to reach their full potential, the project could make a real difference not only to the vocational dance environment, but also to the future of the dance industry.