Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You are listening to Portobello Talk Radio.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: The authentic voice of Let Group Grove.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Great Exchanges. This show is a collaboration between Portobello Radio and Imperial College London where we look forward to the Great Exhibition Road Festival on Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th of June.
Everyone is welcome as Exhibition Road comes alive with cutting edge experiments, mind bending technology, music, dance, art, live science shows and parades, not to mention insect yoga classes and the tiniest disco in the universe. There will also be a chance on both days to join a flash mob setting out to show that dancing is good for you physically, mentally and socially. And that's what we're here to talk about today.
I'm joined by Alice Gregory and Sarah Evans.
Alice is a researcher at the Helix Institute and Imperial College London and Sarah is a teacher at Portobello Dance and Performing Arts based at the Tabernacle. Welcome.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Dancing for health is something that is quite current at the moment.
People beginning to realise the joyousness of dancing, whether it's watching Strictly or whether it's dancing in the kitchen with Sophie Ellis Bexter. Tell us a little bit about your background in dance, Alice.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yes, so I'm a ballroom dancer and well, I did ballet to start with when I was a child, but I didn't test out dancing with a partner until I was a late teenager. But once I did I just thought that's what I got put on the earth to do, to be honest.
And I for my whole adult life then I've been doing competitions all around the world in Singapore, South Africa and it was a really amazing experience.
And then a few years ago now I stopped competing, got too old. Like any athlete, the young one started to beat me.
And since then I've been teaching dancing at Pineapple Dance Studio in Covent Garden and it's beginners boarding classes and it's all about getting everyone to getting everyone dancing and to try dancing with a partner. But alongside all of that I've also always worked as a researcher and a designer and for the past few years that's been at Imperial College and my attention has turned to dance for well being through that.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Sarah, you also are professional in the world of dance and you teach at the Tabernacle at Portobello Dance. Tell us a little bit about your journey in dance.
[00:02:53] Speaker C: So very similar background. So I started dancing at the age of two and then my professional dance career began when I was about 16 before I moved to London to train at the Erdang Academy in Angel. Then I graduated, continued to dance professionally and after the pandemic, which as most people my age, I had to move back in with my mum and dad in North Wales, I've moved back down, carried on working professionally, but then connected with my boss, Spencer Murray, who is the principal at Portobello Dance and Performing Arts and began teaching at the Tabernacle about four years ago.
I started with about two hours a week there and now I work most of Friday and Saturday in all different styles of dance with children across the community from ages 3 to 16.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Dance has always been associated with obviously courting and the beginnings of forming partnerships. It's obviously very good for your physical health in terms of the way it can increase your heartbeat and you consume calories and it brings you a certain flexibility.
What would you say, Alice, are the main health benefits from dance?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Well, I think like you say, it does cover all of those aspects. But what is special about dance, in my opinion, but also backed up by the science, is that it simultaneously improves your physical fitness. So like you say, it increases your heart rate, but that is like most other sports, it also increases your mental health, happiness, your well being. So by taking part in both the physical aspect of it, but the idea of synchronizing your body to music, and especially if you're dancing with a partner or in a troop, synchronizing your movements to other people releases oxytocin, it's the happiness hormone.
So it really, like there's science there to say that dance improves your mental happiness and then also socially dance helps you to connect with other people.
So it might be the case that you go to a street dancing group and you're dancing as an individual, but you feel part of that gang, I suppose, or in the case that I speak from about ballroom and Latin dancing, the fact that you are connected with a partner, of course makes it a kind of sociable thing to do.
And so really the well being benefit is that dance can address all three physical, social and mental well being pieces all at the same time. Where other types of health intervention, they might only be able to address one of those things at a time. So a drug might be able to relieve your pain, like your physical pain, or it might be able to lower your blood pressure or something like that, but it doesn't address the fact that you're then because of your health condition, you might feel isolated or because of your health condition that means you can't work, you might have poorer mental well being, whereas dance helps to tackle all of those things in one go.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Sarah, why do you think people come to you to learn to dance.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: I like the idea that I go into work to.
I obviously want to improve technique, to improve the way that the children are moving.
But fundamentally for me it comes down to I see my job as going in to improve confidence in children. It's always been extremely important to me.
I'm very lucky. I come from a fantastic family background.
That's very supportive and very encouraging. But it's important to me that an extracurricular activity which not everybody has access to can help improve all aspects of a child's life. So it's not just about them coming in and learning a particular dance move and going home. It's about improving their confidence so that the next week in school they might have been asked to make a presentation and they feel a bit more comfortable standing up in front of their peers and talking. Or they might go for their first job interview and they feel comfortable meeting somebody new for the first time and expressing themselves in a confident and coherent way.
So I think as well as the health benefits for dancing for young people, for me, which is my area, it's about improving all aspects of their life as well as the health benefits as well as improving a skill.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Does this, from what you're saying, an important part is the dancing in public in terms of improving confidence, that if you're prepared to go and show your moves in front of your classmates that you, you're going to get an uplift in confidence.
Is there a big difference in terms of well being between dancing on your own, Dancing by myself, as Billy Idol once said on dancing in groups.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: I'm not completely sure on the answer to that one, but it does remind me of a story that I heard from one of the young people that actually worked on an imperial project with me where we were getting children in secondary schools to design what a dance class should, should be like for them to feel like they wanted to engage with it and this, this child that took part.
She said in part of the discussion, oh, I'm. I don't really like doing proper dancing. I'm not into that. But I like just standing in my bedroom and just, I just dance in my bedroom. I'm not into this whole like dance class thing. I just want to dance in my bedroom. And I think that that's fine. That's still it, that's still dancing and that should still be like celebrated and encouraged. And I know young people like use TikTok as a encouragement to, to dance now.
And so yeah, I think you can still. We're everyone's all into the self love thing these days. Right. And I do, although I like make light of it is important that a big element of confidence is just how you feel about yourself when there's no one else there, it's only you in your own mind.
And if having a little dance at home on your own helps to boost your way to feel good, then I think that's also great.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say as well when we talk about confidence, obviously I've just said about the dancing in groups and things like that, but I think we're all very self critical. So I think actually to have the confidence to just be yourself in your own space, completely on your own, you is a big thing in itself actually.
I think to just let go of all of your inhibitions and just do whatever you want. Like you say, it's still moving, it's still dancing, but that actually is a very big part of your own confidence too, I think.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Yes. I mean obviously dancing on your own, you're going to any of the purely physical benefits, whether it's the releasing of endorphins to, you know, beat some pain, whether it's becoming more flexible, whether it's using up calories, that that is as relevant to doing it on your own as it is to doing it in groups. I saw somewhere that at the University of Oxford they looked at people dancing together and in fact they came to the conclusion that we're hardwired to dance together because we mentioned courting at the beginning of this show. But also, you know, whether it's like the hacker in a rugby team, there's a, there's a bonding, there's a kind of team building aspect to that.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
And what you're saying reminds me of a story that a dance researcher that I know tells or a kind of anecdote that when we all go to nightclubs or we go to nightclubs, like what do we do there?
And I think there's a study where they asked rugby player, either football or rugby players, definitely a group of individuals who would probably be quite anti dancing in general.
They said to them, oh, would you dance? How do you feel about dancing? What do you think? They're like, absolutely not. No, no way. I'm not a dancer. I just want to.
No way I'm going to anything to do with dancing. And then later that day they went to a nightclub and lo and behold they're all dancing like on the nightclub dance floor at the end of it.
So I think it's about that acceptance that dance is more than. Although Dance classes, obviously, I'm advocating for. They're absolutely brilliant, and I run them myself. But dance is more than just going to a dance class. It can happen anywhere in the living room.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: It's the idea that it's not always a structural form. I think that's what freaks some people out sometimes. If you go, for instance, to a group of individuals, like a rugby team, oh, would you dance? And they're thinking, oh, like, you want me to go on Strictly? Or something like that. Like, oh, my gosh, no, I'm not putting on a tutu and wearing ballet shoes or anything like that.
But it is just that idea. If you go to any sort of social occasion, and let's think of a song that we would all.
So like, the song from Dirty Dancing, if that comes on at a big birthday party or something like that, you'll find so many people migrating to the dance floor. And it's just. It's not always about being given steps in a structure. It's just about moving however your body feels the need to, and people enjoy that.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: And there's so many styles of dancing, of dance classes now that there are dance classes where even though you're being led through something, it is a lot less structured than we might usually think of. And I don't know the names for them, but I've seen them where you kind of go in and they're like, yeah, freestyle. And so, yeah, it's not always just the traditional ballet lesson.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: No. I've got a friend of mine, actually, who isn't into traditional forms of dancing at all, but she does essentially an exercise class, but it's called. I think. I think it's called club size or something like that. And she goes in and it's just this hall and they turn the lights off and they've all got glow sticks and they turn on music and they all just.
Yes, they're technically following an instructor, but it's like.
I suppose it's like a nightclub experience without the night out. It is structured as an exercise class, but it's fun. It's not. I hate classes at the gym or things like that. I just find it really boring.
And it's a way of getting people moving and doing exercise. That's fun. Yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Well, I've definitely had some nights in a nightclub where afterwards I felt like I'd had the biggest workout.
So, yeah, obviously does work.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: TikTok obviously has popularized dancing, whether it is people doing routines or whether it's, you know, get, you know, shooting your dad, doing dad dancing.
Strictly has taken polished dancing to new heights. It doesn't matter how people get drawn into dance.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Well, I think it's really interesting for me that you bring up Strictly, because as a Boroman Latin teacher, people say that to me all the time, that Strictly must kind of bring in so many people to burymun Latin dance lessons. But I actually don't think it really does. I kind of disagree with that.
And I mean, I would also expect it to, but there's obviously something that people don't relate to, or they see it on the tv, but then they don't think that that's for me or that's something that I could do or that's something that I could try.
And I find that partner Dance Styles Forum in Latin is certainly at Pineapple Dance Studio. They have every kind of dance style you could imagine. And bore him in Latin is the less. There's less uptake of that, for sure.
And I think it's. There is an element of fear going in and trying something. And I know that if now if I go and try a dance class, it's not in my style, I'll feel nervous before I go. And then I walk in the room and I'm like, oh, when's it going to start and what's going to happen? And so I completely appreciate the feeling that you would have if you went to try that for the first time. Plus the added thought of who am I going to dance with? Am I going to like the partner or are they going to think I'm rubbish? And so I completely see the barriers to trying for the first time. And we actually had an amazing event at Imperial last night with a where we partnered up with a group of street dancers who.
They're almost like buskers. It's called Speaker Box Street Party. And they would take place on the street in London at the weekend. And they just get the roads dancing, essentially. And they did that with us in Imperial last night and got the people at our kind of little exhibition to join in. Not little, big exhibition should not say little.
But I think what really worked about them engaging people to try it is that it wasn't just one teacher or even two. There was like 10 of them, 10 of the troupe, all dancing.
And because you see multiple people doing it, I think you think, oh, okay, it must be all right to try then. Like, if all 10 of those people are prepared to do that dancing, then probably it's okay for me to give it a go. So it was really interesting insights of how to encourage people to dance.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: The concept of fear has kind of crept into this conversation a couple of times. You know, being scared to try a new thing, being scared to try things in front of other people. When you were a professional dancer, did some of the benefits disappear because you were working at such a stress level?
[00:18:10] Speaker C: It's a tricky one. I feel like there's a self consciousness in adulthood that isn't addressed very often. I feel like for me personally, obviously I'm working with children now, but when I was like, I look at some of my kids and I think when I was your age I just, I would do anything, I didn't care. And actually now I'm sort of the same as you is that I'll go into a dance class, I might go to Pineapple or there's another studio called Bass in Vauxhall and I'll go and I'll suddenly feel really nervous and it's something I've done all of my life. But all of a sudden I'm like, oh gosh, like I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen like you said.
And I do think it's really tricky when you're in that professional setting.
I found anyway, I didn't do as much of the competition circuit but I find when you're in the professional setting because it's work sort of fades away because it's something that you're being paid to do. It's the same as any sort of 9 to 5 job you're going in. That's what your contract is, that's what you're being paid for. So it's not there so much. But in a social setting I think it can definitely kick in a lot more. For me personally, I think my experience.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Is that the physical benefits of dance, the like calorie burning, heart raising.
When I was a competitive dancer that was definitely there. Like the training was like really extreme.
Like as much as running miles and miles or more. Like I can remember some very like high intense training. I think maybe in the competitive side the mental well being aspect of it, like the doing it for the joy probably just fade away a bit because of the pressure of like I really want to, I really want to win or this really matters for the next stage of where I'm going to go next with my career.
But now that I'm, I don't compete and I'm teaching, I think the, like, I just feel so lucky and joyful and happy to dance like whenever I can.
But I wonder if sometimes I wonder if that's because I'm lucky to also have another job, I think dancing is a hard. The arts are a hard thing to make a living from and I can imagine, if you have the pressure for it to need to pay your bills, essentially, that some of the joy could get taken away.
So more funding for the arts.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: The Helix center is a joint adventure really, isn't it, between the Royal College of Art and Imperial.
So bringing art and science together, do you feel that people take the, the benefits of arts, the benefits of movement like dance seriously enough in terms of health?
I mean, we're here, we are at grand in the lee of Grenfell Tower, and after the fire, art therapy became a very important part of the healing process for a lot of people, you know, who maybe couldn't find the words to express the horror at what had gone on. Dance, you know, we've been through some of the multiple benefits of dance in the conversation so far. Should people be addressing the positive advantages of music, dance, arts and take it more seriously?
[00:21:51] Speaker B: I think that people, or, you know, the decision makers, the people that hold the purse strings, they probably do know the benefits of dance and the arts now.
And there's more and more evidence being generated all the time. It's just that it's hard and slow to change things.
So where historically, like money is spent, spent on treatment in health care, we want to move towards the money being spent more in prevention so people don't become unwell in the first place. And the arts are a really great way to contribute to that prevention. But I suppose changing these huge structures like the nhs, making those changes takes many years or a lifetime in a way.
So I think it's not necessary that it's not being, being taken seriously, it's that it's hard to change.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Sarah the Portobello dance has been at the tabernacle for 30 years and a bit more now and has really cemented its place at the heart of the community.
I mean, I think the people around here really appreciate Portobello dance and I know that, you know, former teachers there have said that people still come up to me, the street 30 years after doing classes as a 3 year old.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I think for me personally, I think that the things that you do as a child can carry with you.
You know, I will always. I remember my first dance class as clear as day. I remember what I was wearing, I remember standing at the back of the hall, I remember letting go of my mum's hand and just going and joining in straight away. These Things do stay with children, I think for us. I mean, we run a whole program. We now do. We've extended to Friday nights for four hours on a Friday night. And we run all day Saturday doing all styles. And we're constantly, constantly trying to think of ways that we can add in extra classes, ways that maybe we can extend our program to extra days. And I think it's just about, for me anyway. And I know for Spencer, the principal, it's about ways that children have an extra place where they can be themselves, where they can learn new things.
I've got a lot of girls who spend their whole Saturday with us. They'll come in for their ballet class in the morning with me. They'll stay and they'll do a tap class through to the evening where they'll do a street dance class with Luke, my colleague. And during the day then they're. They're coming out to Portobello Road to get their lunch together in a little group and they're sitting in the tabernacle and they're doing their homework when they've got a break. And it's just, it's about extending that community feel of obviously they're learning something. And I had a brilliant Saturday last week with so much improvement. And you can see when you see a child's eyes lit up when they know that I had a child last week who's been trying for ages to get into the splits. And they did it for the first time last Saturday and it was like all of their birthdays had come at once. It was just the best feeling. But knowing that they're going home feeling that they've made an improvement and that they've had a nice day with their friends in a safe community. The tabernacle is fantastic for that.
I think that is so important and that's why the school continues to be such a success.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: I have an interesting similar experience but with adults that the group. I run a group not in central London but near. At Brunel University.
And it's just a Thursday night group ballroom dancing class, but it's been going for really quite a few years now. And the consistent group of adults I have who come, they're so, I don't know, diverse in a way that they would never be.
Have come across each other, I don't think, without the dancing. Like they're very. All different ages, but big range of ages and. But now they're actually friends. Like they have a WhatsApp group and I'm in it, but I, I never seem to Like I don't have, I just see what's happening in there. I don't really contribute.
But they go to stuff together now outside of the dancing. And in a way that's something that I'm like, I don't want to sound boasty but it's something that I'm so proud of that my dance class has made contributed to the social life of that group of people.
[00:26:35] Speaker C: I think that's a benefit as well that isn't talked about enough. Like we've spoken about the health benefits, the mental well being benefits as well. But I think obviously all aspects of exercise are important. Whatever somebody chooses to do. But exercise like dance or like any team sport that can bring people together in a social setting like London can sometimes be an extreme, extremely lonely place. Especially it's somewhere that people move to quite often and feel quite isolated. So any of these sorts of classes that again is sort of helping people, it's building them socially. So not only is it physically helping, mentally helping, but like social, like social aspects are really important too in bringing people together.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: I think you both work primarily, I think with young people but there are massive benefits to dancing as you progress through life.
I mean it improves your bone strength and it can give you the flexibility. So falls might not be such a big problem as you, you get on in life and apparently the multitasking that's involved in, in getting the various limbs to coordinate is very good for your neuroplasticity and improves your spatial awareness, your memory and all sorts of things.
Are there enough? Is it possible to get adults into dance if they didn't start age 3 or aged 6 in their street dance class?
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well there's a lot of, I've certainly known a lot of adults over time that they didn't get the opportunity when they were younger to go to dance classes or anything else like that.
So I don't see, I don't see it as an age restrictive thing whatsoever. I think if you want to try something, it's like anything. If I, you know, when I'm 65, if I suddenly decide that I want to start learning to paint, I'll go to a painting class. I don't think there's any restrictions whatsoever to do with age. And I think to be honest, no matter what age you are, there's always time to give something a go and to learn something new. Yeah.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Well that brings us quite nicely to the Great Exhibition Road Festival which is on June 7 and June 8 this year.
You Alice will be at the festival with your team. And you've got something planned for us?
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So we want to showcase the research that we did last year at Imperial College that I mentioned earlier, where we were were getting teenagers to design with us what an engaging and mental well being enhancing dance class would be like.
We want to share those kind of findings with all the members of the public at the festival. One of the main things that we learned from the young people is how in order to feel enthused by dancing, they want to have a dance leader. I'm not going to call them a teacher because it's not always a teacher, but someone leading them through the dance who is inspiring to them, who can show them their skill in dancing, show them choreography. And that's not something that necessarily happens in schools at the moment.
There's a Ofsted report that says although dance is part of the national curriculum, it's for the most part ignored, not taught at all or taught badly.
So we want to showcase this idea of being inspired by dancers to the members of the public at the festival. And we're going to partner up again with Speaker Box Street Party, this amazing organization who get London streets dancing every weekend.
There's going to be three sessions on each of the festival days where we'll do a flash mob in the street, get the road dancing, and then we'll be asking people to tell us about their preferred kinds of movement, whether that's dance or something else, to kind of disseminate this research about dance for wellbeing. So I'm really excited.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Alice, you mentioned the fact that dance is on the national curriculum.
Can you ever see a time when it is prescribed on the nhs?
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Yes, I really hope so. And there's actually already a initiative that the NHS have introduced and have a policy for called social prescribing, which. Where healthcare professionals can identify a need in a patient to do something, something like dance, but it also might not necessarily be something physical. It could be joining a gardening group or an art, like a painting group, but the professional can identify that need and then prescribe to that person to do that, in the same way that they might prescribe a drug.
But it's not quite working as well as it could be yet, because the funding that's needed to implement those arts sessions in the community isn't there. So although it can be socially prescribed, the right classes aren't necessarily happening, and especially in order to make those things accessible.
In healthcare, we talk a lot about equity and giving everyone the same opportunity to get Good access to healthcare. And for example, I ran a dance class last week for people who are blind or partially sighted. And the amount of things that I had to do to make sure that was accessible, really, it needs lots more funding.
So I think there's some more work to do to make socially prescribing really work as it's intended.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: I mean, things like physio, one just adds a little bit of music and you've got dance. And you were saying a moment ago, I mean, I. I have shoulder issue and I was sent up to St. Charles's to do physio and I lasted about three sessions before I got bored.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Yeah. The thing is with physio is that if you have a specific injury. I've been through several rounds of physio for various things myself, but it can be really boring and I think that's what puts people off. I think I was saying earlier that my father had some back issues and went to the doctor and he was put on a program through the NHS to go to the gym and do certain exercises. But. But it was again, just not engaging and really quite boring. So I think there's definitely an argument to be made that in time, hopefully we can make it so that there's options for people to take up. So they're improving these problems, but in a way that is maybe a little bit more engaging and not just a case of sort of just sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up. I mean, I don't think there's anybody out there that doesn't enjoy music. I've never met anybody that doesn't like music. And as we've been saying throughout this discussion, dance doesn't always have to be a structural form of holding onto a ballet bar and doing bend, stretch.
Anybody that hears music, I personally feel, will automatically want to move. So there's definitely a way that the two could be put together.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: There's a really great organization who I believe are connected to the. The Newcastle University.
That's where they've done the research that have turned the movements that a physiotherapist would get, someone who's kind of experiencing frailty or high fall risk. There's these seven movements that a physiotherapist would do with that patient, and they've turned those movements into a sequence that is put to music and kind of branded it as a dance class.
So that the idea of doing the physio and getting people to do it and engage with it is much more successful because, like we say, it feels more natural. More integrated into something that you might want to do anyway.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And I can't wait till June 7 and June 8 for the flash mobs.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Will I see their dancing opportunities in Prince's Garden?
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Sarah, before you go, how do people get involved at Portobello Dance?
[00:35:35] Speaker C: So we. We are stationed at the Tabernacle on Friday evenings and Saturdays. You can find our email on our website or just pop into the Tabernacle and speak to us. We run all different kinds of dance. We run Musical Theatre from 4 till 7 on a Friday, that's with me.
And then on a Saturday we've got a whole program. We do ballet, tap, jazz, street and K pop.
We've also, I think we're one of the only schools that I know of that do tap and street lessons for younger children. So we can start from age three, which is quite rare because normally you just get ballet. We also run holiday schemes, so at Easter and in the summer we'll be running holiday schemes.
Some have funded places if you're on Parent Premium and you can find that all of that information on our website or just pop in and see us. We're always there.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Thank you very much.
The Great Exhibition Road Festival takes place this year on Saturday the 7th of June and Sunday the 8th.
So come on down to Exhibition Road and join a flash mob of people dancing for health. Porta Bella Radio is delighted to be hosting the main stage where you can hear fabulous artists including Kids on the Green and the Rum Band. And if you come down, you can discover an exciting range of events lined up from Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the VA and all the other August institutions around South Kent.
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Great Exchanges is a collaboration between Imperial College London and Portobello Radio.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Portobello.
