Abstract

Building and sustaining a dance career requires more than technical and artistic skills; it requires psychological resilience. How might resilience training be effectively integrated within dance education? What might be the pitfalls associated with resilience training? What might be strategies to overcome these challenges? While considering the works of various psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, historians, philosophers, scientists, movement specialists, and artists, this paper examines the concept of psychological resilience, how it might be fostered in dance education, and proposes a pedagogical approach rooted in the practice of mental imagery, playfulness, collectivity, contradiction, sensoriality, and external attentional focus.