Elsa Posey |Founder of the Registry of Dance Educators

Elsa Posey founded the Posey School of Dance (1953) in Northport, New York with the goal of providing high quality dance education to her hometown community. For fifty-four years, she has delivered innovative and comprehensive ballet programs for beginning through advanced students of all ages. In the last two decades, she has developed integrated arts programming in dance, drama, music, and mixed media arts; and introduced dance notation and dance history into studio curriculum. In the Posey School of Dance she is responsible for program and curriculum development, administration, teacher training, professional development, and faculty supervision. Former students have performed on Broadway, in Hollywood movies and with renowned international ballet companies. Many former dancers teach in public education, university dance programs, and in private schools of dance; and those who haven’t chosen dance as a career, continue to dance for personal and artistic enrichment.

Elsa has dedicated her professional life to dance education research, professional development, national dance standards, and creative dance for early childhood education. She works as an arts educator, writer, and consultant to national and international arts organizations. Her research projects involve current practices in training pre-professional ballet dancers during their training from thirteen to seventeen, and redesigning curriculum to teach ballet to children safely, creatively and correctly.

Elsa has been important to national advocacy in helping define the national agenda for dance education. For a decade, she worked with the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) Task Force committees that culminated in three publications: Research Priorities for Arts Education, Early Childhood Arts Education, and Teacher Training and Professional Development in the Arts.

Elsa Posey was the first elected President of National Dance Education Organization (1998 – 2001), served twelve years on the NDEO Board of Directors as liaison of the National Registry of Dance Educators, and writes for the Journal of Dance Education (JODE) and Dance Education in Practice (DEIP). She is the recipient of the 2006 NDEO Lifetime Achievement award. For decades she served national dance associations including, among others: American Dance guild, Congress in Research in Dance, Dance Critics Association, Dance Notation Bureau, International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, National Dance Association, National Dance Education Organization, and the Society of Dance History Scholars.