Louisa Petts is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University. She is the recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship award offered by Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. I am phenomenologically exploring the experience of dance for older adults. My research argues that dance classes for older adults differ entirely depending on the genre, style, and pedagogical approach, all of which have the potential to offer entirely unique experiences of belonging, meaning and access for the participants. This study asks whether dance designed for older adults can be an inherently inclusive space, advocates for improved access to dance that is meaningful for older populations whilst highlighting that the specificity of dance genre in the older adult dance experience ought to be more routinely acknowledged both in research and dance practice.

Louisa Petts is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University. She is the recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship award offered by Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. Her research interests broadly concern dance for the health and wellbeing of older adults, people living with dementia and their caregivers. Currently, her research advocates for improved access to dance that is meaningful for older populations, whilst querying whether dance genre and style offer entirely unique experiences of belonging for participants. 

Louisa studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and was a recipient of the Trinity Laban Dance Award Scholarship, where she graduated with an MSc Dance Science with Distinction in 2019. Prior, Louisa studied at the University of Roehampton, achieving First Class Honours, and receiving the prize for Best Dissertation in BA Dance Studies in 2018.

Louisa has worked as a community dance artist delivering dance classes to those living with dementia in assisted living homes and people living with Parkinson’s. She currently works as a lecturer at De Montfort University and bbodance and is an editorial assistant for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices. Louisa is also part of the site-specific research project ‘The Shape of Sound’ in collaboration with artist-researcher Petra Johnson and researchers at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), which explores the embodied technologies of the human inner ear through movement practice.