The Green Room is a digital resource for dancers, parents, and teachers to talk about the nature of injury recovery and the associated mental health effects. As an already difficult conversation, it can be even more difficult to explain to someone who does not dance what it feels like to lose your physical, creative, and social outlet. The culture of dance promotes a ‘show-must-go-on’ mentality which can be harmful in both the short and long term.
The Green Room is not meant as an emergency resource and does not offer medical advice or care. If you or a loved one is experiencing a mental health or medical emergency, please contact 911 or your local emergency services.
Crisis Text Link: Text “HELLO” to 741741
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
When a dancer is injured, their daily schedules are disrupted and the strict training regiments that they abide by are altered or taken away entirely. The Green Room provides insights into the mental effects of this disorientation and a means to circumvent it through downloadable trackers so that you can take control of your mental health and recovery.
view the trackersAs injury can be very isolating, The Green Room strives to both provide resources of support as well as educate support systems. Having a strong support system through an injury is instrumental in ensuring a long and lasting recovery, as well as improving the community’s relationship to injury.
view the guidesThe goals for The Green Room were created in a response to research into the relationship between dance, injury, and identity. The culture of the dance industry creates a unique environment in which dance and identity become deeply intertwined, and injury can quickly and devastatingly disrupt this.
You can learn more about the relationship between dance, identity, and injury on our Learn page.
Hello, and welcome to The Green Room! I created The Green Room as a part of my Master's program at Elon University, but it means so much more to me than a thesis project. After dancing since the age of two, I decided to pursue a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography (also at Elon, go Phoenix) in 2016. However, in my junior year of college, I fell and tore my ACL. Though the physical recovery was one of the hardest things I have ever done, I found even years later that I was still feeling the psychological impacts of the injury and realized that it was not something that was addressed in the way that the healing of my body was.
I believe that dancers are some of the strongest people, both by nature and by trade, but that doesn't mean that we don't all need a little help every once in a while. I felt that there was a gap in the community I have loved my whole life, and so created this project to try to bring the conversation of how injury is treated within dance culture to the table.
See more of my work here!