Winter Garden dancer, USF grad named Fulbright Scholar

WINTER GARDEN  Dance always has been a passion for Winter Garden resident Madison McGrew, and now that passion has led her to win a Fulbright Scholarship to study dance science in London.

Madison, daughter of Winter Garden Fire Chief Matt McGrew, has been dancing since she was in elementary school. She always loved the rush of performing and for a long time didn’t have any other plan for her future aside from performing.

However, when she was in eighth grade, she sustained her first major injury, and between then and her graduation from West Orange High in 2012, she had acquired nine musculoskeletal injuries. During her senior year —and despite a broken foot — she auditioned for programs throughout Florida. Spending so much time with an orthopedist sparked Madison’s interest in health and physiology.

“I took anatomy and physiology in high school, and I think he (my doctor) also cultivated my interest in dance science because I was always injured and he was always helping me out,” she said. “I was interested in the science aspect that I was always getting myself into.”

After graduating from West Orange, Madison headed to the University of South Florida, where she began to pursue a bachelor’s degree in dance performance. As her freshman year went on, she discovered the world of health and the extensive amount of research USF put into it. Halfway through freshman year, she declared a second major — biomedical sciences.

“From then on, it was getting cast in dance performances and also balancing doing all the science prerequisites and organic chemistry,” she said. “I got to travel abroad a lot, and with science, I got to travel to Italy to study biochemistry and participate in some undergraduate research.”

Since graduating this spring, Madison has big plans laid out for the next year. In April, she found out that she was chosen as a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, one of the nation’s most prestigious scholarship and ambassadorial programs. 

As a Fulbright Scholar, Madison is headed to Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London this fall, where she will stay for a year and obtain a master’s degree in dance science. Her tuition, room and board will be covered, and she will pursue her studies while representing the United States.

While in London, Madison will look at both the physical and psychological aspects of dance and dance practice to gain a better understanding of the sport and the science that goes into it. She plans specifically to focus on pain tolerance, because it alters the line of communication between a dancer and physician.

“Pain tolerance really affected how I addressed injuries personally and how the rehab process is and even coming out of those injuries,” she said. 

Through all of her experiences in the fields of dance and medicine, Madison said finding the connectivity between the two has been her favorite part.

“If you take the time to follow where your heart is and what your experiences are, there’s connectivity,” she said. “Science has brought me to places where I get to be a vehicle for social change. It’s more than a degree, it’s a worldview for me.”

Contact Danielle Hendrix at [email protected].