13. October 2026 9:00 -
13. October 2026 19:00
The Institute of Choreology of the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague invites you to the international conference Compassion, Acceptance and Mindfulness in Dance and Performing Arts. The event will take place on 13 October 2026 at the Gallery of HAMU (Malostranské náměstí 13, Prague 1).
Dance and performing arts unfold through lived bodies, bodies shaped by training, expectations, and desire. As questions of well-being and mental health gain increasing relevance, there is a growing need to reconsider how dancers and other performing artists relate to themselves and to their own embodied experience. Compassion-, acceptance- and mindfulness-based practices offer an alternative lens through which dancers and other performing artists may explore care, sustainability, vulnerability, and resilience in creative processes. This conference invites scholars, artists, educators, and practitioners to reflect on compassion-, acceptance-, and mindfulness-based practices as embodied practices in dance and the performing arts, examining how they shape the daily lives of dancers and other performing artists across diverse cultural and professional contexts.
The conference will feature presentations by international experts on the following topics:
- Sanna Nordin-Bates (The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, Sweden)
- Amber Mosewich (University of Alberta, Canada)
- Courtney Walton (University of Melbourne, Australia)
The conference will be broadcast via Zoom. The link will be shared with all registered participants before the conference.
Important: Conference language will be English. A Czech summary of the presentation will be distributed on the day of the conference.
Contact: Josef Bartoš, Ph.D., josef.bartos@hamu.cz
Further information is available at: www.psychologyfordancers.com/conference/general-information
Conference was supported by the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as part of the "Fostering Self-Compassion in Dance: A Multimethodological Reserach, Intervention, and Application to Practice" project supported by the Institutional Support for Long-Term Conceptual Development of a Research Organisation, provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in 2026.
Funded and supported by:
Malostranské náměstí 13
118 00 Praha 1
9:30–10:45 – Welcome: Josef Bartoš
9:45–10:45 – Keynote speaker 1: Amber Mosewich (Chair: TBA)
• Staying on Your Own Side: Self-Compassion in Dance and Performance
10:45–11:00 – Coffee break
11:00–12:20 – Oral presentations 1: Dance education (Chair: Sanna Nordin-Bates)
• Emma Morgan (UK)– How Self-Compassionate Are UK Undergraduate Dance Students? A Latent Profile Analysis
• Ana Domingues (PT) – “I am Enough”: Working with Core Beliefs to Cultivate Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion in Ballet Dancers
• Martina Hajdyla Lacová (SK) – Non-Doing Dance: Towards a More Sustainable Dance Pedagogy
• Marta Poláková (SK), Beata Žitniaková Gurgová (SK)– Embodied Stillness as a Space Supporting Subjective Well-Being and Creative Agency in Dance Education
12:20–13:30 – Lunch break
13:30–14:30 – Keynote speaker 2: Courtney Walton (Chair: TBA)
• Working Towards Compassion-Based Environments in the Performing Arts
14:30–14:45 – Coffee break
14:45–15:45 – Oral presentations 2: Other applications (Chair: Amber Mosewich)
• Josef Bartoš (CZ) – ‘Like I Want to Shed My Body, Peel It Off Myself’: Exploring Czech Professional Contemporary Dancers’ Body Self-Compassion
• Vesna Bajić Stojiljković (SB) – Choreographic Practice and Embodied Awareness in Stage Presentations of Serbian Traditional Dance
• Martin Maryška (CZ) – ‘You Are So Performative!’ The Aesthetics of Shame and Performed Vulnerability
15:45–16:00 – Coffee break
16:00–16:30 – Practical exercise
• Anna Drahorádová (CZ) – Embodied Self-Compassion in Practice: Brief Experiential Exercises
16:30–17:30 – Oral presentations 3: Interventions (Chair: Courtney Walton)
• Joanna Kotek (PL) – How to Implement Mindfulness Programs in a Specialized Performance Environment Across the Age Groups: A Pilot Study on Athletes and Dancers
• Inês Pinto (PT) – Therapeutic Presence Through Movement: Embodiment, Attachment, and Relational Care in Dance and Clinical Practice
• Dominika Grygarová (CZ) – Self-Compassion as Epistemic Safety: An Embodied Predictive Processing Account of Well-Being in Performing Arts
17:30–17:45 – Coffee break
17:45–18:45 – Keynote speaker 3: Sanna Nordin-Bates (Chair: TBA)
• On Perfectionism, Dance Culture, and Why Self-Compassion is Hard to Do
18:45–19:00 – Closing: Josef Bartoš
* The organizers reserve the right to make changes to the program.
Sanna Nordin-Bates
The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, Sweden
Dr. Nordin-Bates focuses on dance environments, autonomy, healthy motivation, and perfectionism. She has long‑standing collaborations with the Swedish Royal Ballet School, serves on the steering group for professional dancer education at Balettakademien, and is a member of the advisory board on dancer education within the Department of Education. She also teaches on perfectionism and mental training in the Master of Applied Sciences in Dance Sciences at the University of Bern.
In 2026–2027, she works with the Royal Ballet on the project Coaching Ballet Dancers for the 21st Century: Autonomy and Self-Regulation in a Changing Culture. Her research has addressed topics such as imagery as a mental and creative tool in dance, talent development and early specialization, eating‑disorder risk factors in dance, and creativity. In 2023, she published Essentials of Dance Psychology with Human Kinetics.
Amber Mosewich
University of Alberta, Canada
Dr. Mosewich’s research interests focus on the examination of stress, coping, emotion, and resultant cognitive and behavioural responses within the sport domain. Her research also extends into related performance contexts, including dance. Performance contexts can present many challenges, and ensuring that individuals within these environments - including athletes, dancers, coaches, instructors, officials, and other members of the performance team - have the skills and resources to effectively manage different issues is essential to promote adaptive responses to stress and emotion and foster successful experiences that are also positive and healthy.
One area of particular interest for Dr. Mosewich surrounds self-compassion as a potential coping resource for athletes and performers. The premise is that promoting self-compassionate frames of mind might promote acceptance, acknowledgment, and accurate evaluation of challenging sport and performance situations, and attenuate ruminative or avoidant approaches, better allowing athletes and performers to move forward in pursuit of their goals and highest possible level of performance.
Courtney Walton
University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr. Walton is a Senior Research Fellow (C.R. Roper Fellow) and endorsed Sport and Exercise Psychologist at the University of Melbourne, where he leads the Wellbeing in Sport and Performance Lab. His research focuses on better understanding and supporting mental health in high-performance environments such as sport and the performing arts. He has published close to 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is an Associate Editor for the journal Performance Enhancement & Health.
Much of Courtney's work centres on the role of self-compassion and self-criticism in performer mental health. He is also interested in the creation of compassionate, psychologically safe environments in high-performance contexts. In the performing arts specifically, he recently piloted a brief self-compassion intervention for performing artists, and is also currently leading a scale development project to better measure self-compassion and self-criticism among performing artists.
Registration is needed via following link:
https://forms.gle/2KFnFkaJYFRnWCZi6
Conference Fees:
On-line participants will receive an email within 24 hours with bank transfer details.
The Institute of Choreology of the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague invites you to the international conference Compassion, Acceptance and Mindfulness in Dance and Performing Arts.
We welcome theoretical, empirical, and practice-based contributions, as well as diverse perspectives from scholars, practitioners, educators, and students.
Important: Conference language will be English. A Czech summary of the presentation will be distributed on the day of the conference.
Topics include, but are not limited to compassion-, acceptance-, and mindfulness-based practices in relation to:
General Abstract Guidelines:
Types of presentations:
Submission/Review Process:
Important Deadlines:
Abstracts can be submitted via following link:
https://forms.gle/afTiE3H7LS2YXLd37
Contact: Josef Bartoš, Ph.D., josef.bartos@hamu.cz
Hudební a taneční fakulta AMU
Malostranské nám. 258/13
118 00 Praha 1
Tel.: +420 234 244 111
IČO: 61384984
DIČ: CZ61384984
