What I Wish I had in my Dance Bag

My dance bag is a Mary Poppins's bag. I have at least 3 pairs of shoes, three outfits, hair ties, bobby pins, hair nets, gel, two hair brushes, 5 socks, chocolate, Band-Aids, a golf ball, nail clippers, sewing kit, and a water bottle at any given time. My friends claim when the zombie apocalypse hits, they want to have me on their side with my survival bag. Dancer's bags are survival bags we have the needed resources to treat any injury or mishap. However, our bags do not have the tools to prevent injury.

      I wish my dance bag had a foam roller, so I could roll out tight muscles before I entered class. A couple of Thera-bands to work out when the studio is in choreography mode. Hot and ice pack to warm up my muscles before class and to cool down my muscles after. It would probably be a good idea to have food other than chocolate in my bag too. Ideally the studio would have these tools for their dancers to use. Sadly, most dancers learn to take care of their body once they are a professionals or after an injury. That's about 17 years that a dancer trains without asking why and dealing with pain. To prevent injuries studios need to encourage their students and teacher to talk about injuries. Dancers know that being injured means a loss in opportunities and parts, so they often don't mention their injury. If the studios discussed nutrition, conditioning, and injury prevention with their students early on, then they way dancers react to injuries will drastically change, making the studio a safer place.

Yep. I got to meet 5 professional dancers!

     This week I got to work with a principle ballerina, two world champions, and two company dancers. Never in a million years would I imagine I would get to see so many professional dancers. Out of the 5 dancers only 2 were treating injuries. The others were working on flexibility and strength to improve their dancing. We even had one aerialist come in to simply to work out. Dancers burn hundreds of calories dancing 8 hours a day, so why do they continue to work out outside of dancing?

    Most professional dancers are not dancing 365 days a year. A dancer from the San Francisco Ballet Company explained that American ballet companies do not pay their dancers when they are not in a show and during breaks. This means most company dancers are still auditioning yearly. Therefore, dancers are constantly training to maintain their strength to protect their bodies.  Also the studio trains the artistry of dance and teaches choreography, leaving it up to the dancers to train to meet the athletic requirements of dance. To keep in shape dancers work out and stop by their physical therapy office for tune ups.

     During secession at Foothills the patient first completes the given exercises. For example, a ballet dancer treating hip flexor pain will stretch the sore muscles and complete both exercises that cautiously strengthen and stretch the muscles. The physician will also throw in exercises not related to the injury to improve the patient's overall strength.  The after they complete all of their exercise the physician will manually work with the muscle. This could be either by massage or a weird technique called flossing. To floss a muscle the physician takes a metal tool and scrapes it along the muscle fibers. Flossing removes any excess scar tissue to clear up damaged areas of the body. When the physician is done working the athletic trainer will give the patient ice before they leave to decrease any inflammation caused during the secession. 

    Now, there are many things a dancer cannot do without a physical therapist to improve pain; however, stretching and strengthening sore muscles before class can easily be implemented. A teacher cannot give individualized attention to each student’s weaknesses, so it is important that all dancers take care of their own body and not push their limits too far. 

A Correct First Position

Stand up and try this.

• Stand normally with your feet in parallel.
• Rotate your hips and knees to make a "V"shape with your heels as the peak.
• This is your natural first position, which is one of the most common and important positions in ballet.
• If you have bad knees sit down and imagine the next part. If not, stay standing and try to make a horizontal line with your feet, keeping you heels touching.
• If you are standing you should feel pressure on you knees and it should be difficult to straighten your legs and stand in this position.
• If this is easy, please take a ballet class right away, all of the dancers will be jealous.

What you just tried, if you followed the instructions above, was turning out to be in first position. In the ballet world a perfect 180 degree turn out is ideal. However, if you tried it you probably noticed it is hard and creates a large moment on your knees. Vary few dancers have a natural 180 degree turn out, so they force their knees to create that unnatural and painful position. First position is one of the six fundamental positions that ballet dancers employ to jump, turn, leap, stand, and balance. By training with a forced turnout the dancer changes the alignment of their knees and feet. If you stand in your natural first position and plie (bend your knees) your knees should be in alignment with you second toe. A forced turn out pushes your knees forward causing the arch of your foot to roll forward. When the arches are forced to function in a miss aligned position the foot becomes deformed. The most common deformity is a Hallux valgus, commonly known as a bunion.  To prevent these injuries researchers and the Physical therapist at my internship recommend strengthening the lateral rotators

 and Gluteus Maximus. The hips should derive 60% of a dancer's turn out and only 40% should be derived from the knees. Variations of the 60/40 ratio will eventually lead to injuries. A dancers body is their instrument, but not everyone has the same flexibilities and strengths. To protect a dancer's instrument they must work to achieve their goals and not force them. Forcing any instrument to work in a way it was not designed damages the instrument. So dance teachers and dancers be careful and be cautious of your bodies limits.