Scientists collaborate with Royal Ballet to improve performance

The Royal Ballet School has announced plans to work with scientists to unlock advances in performance science that might help train the dance stars of the future.

Researchers from the University of Essex will study pre-professional students aged 16 to 20 to help the school better prepare them for the profession.

The rigorous techniques of classic ballet require dancers to have extreme physical fitness, which scientists hope might be enhanced by elite sports techniques like targeted weight training.

The goal of the research is to discover new approaches to increasing dancers’ strength in order to improve performance and reduce the risk of injury.

The research will be led by Jamie Harding, a strength and conditioning coach at Essex University’s School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences. 

“Ballet is unique in that it is an aesthetic art and a high-performance sport – with exacting competing demands,” he said.

“Dancers perform feats that are unimaginable to mere mortals and our research will make sure their bodies are up to the gruelling demands.”

Researchers will conduct five studies, which will finish in early 2025.

The school already has a dedicated in-house healthcare team that works to understand and optimise dancer development and training. The research will build on this existing programme, which collects data on dancers to understand the key stages in a student’s growth and development.

“Research is hugely integral to us as a world-leading organisation,”  said Head of Healthcare Karen Sheriff. “It helps us to answer specific performance questions, develops our practice and enhances our scientific understanding of our young dancers so that we can identify the most effective ways to support them as athletes.”