Elsa Urmston
Elsa is a UK-based dance educator, living in Ipswich. She has a full-time portfolio career and is currently working with clients such as Stopgap Dance Company, Dance Umbrella, Dance Network Association, East London Dance, Hofesh Shechter Company, Central School of Ballet, DanceCity, London Contemporary Dance School, University of Bedfordshire and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. From 2014-2017, Elsa was Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) Manager at DanceEast, focussing on developing and ensuring rigorous practices for young dancers undertaking pre-vocational training.
Elsa has worked as Programme Co-ordinator (Maternity Cover) of the MSc Dance Science programme at Trinity Laban, and Lecturer in Dance on the BA and MSc programmes there. She now is module leader for the MSc and MFA Dance Science Embodied and Applied Practices unit there. Elsa also supervises undergraduate and postgraduate projects at London Contemporary Dance School, Bird College and London Studio Centre and is a quality assessor for Safe in Dance International.
Elsa works often as a consultant evaluator and researcher to explore the impact of dance participation on various sociocultural and health-based outcomes.
In 2017, Elsa worked with Dance Network Association in Essex on their Family Dance programmes across the county, examining the role that dance can play in the social inclusion of early years’ participants and their families.
In 2018, Elsa will be working with Dance Umbrella to assess the impact of dance participation on developing and sustaining audiences in the Croydon area. As a researcher at the University of Bedfordshire, her work with Stopgap Dance Company will examine the values, attitudes and behaviours of dance artists working in inclusive dance education contexts. Elsa is chair of the Dance Educators’ Committee for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science and sits on the Expert Panel for Children and Young People for One Dance UK.
In 2008, Elsa gained an MSc with Distinction in Dance Science from Trinity Laban and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, receiving a distinction in the Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice from the University of Bedfordshire in 2011.
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