In dance, unlike many other art forms, the human body is both the instrument and the art; it’s the canvas, the paintbrush and the masterpiece all at once. When creativity strikes, dancers and choreographers may begin by brainstorming, journalling or just exploring movement as they start bringing an idea to life.
What if the creative aims for a work exceeds a dancer’s current physical capacity or places new demands on the body? Health care is often used reactively when we have pain or an injury. However, physiotherapists can be crucial in supporting dancers throughout the different stages of their creative journey. A proactive physiotherapy approach will include both building facilities to execute creative aims and caring for the body when creative aims place new or challenging demands on it. When looking at the body as the instrument, a physiotherapist becomes an essential team member to bridge the gap between creativity and physicality.
Whether developing your own choreography or interpreting someone else’s, here are four key ways physiotherapists can proactively support you during your creative process:
Understanding the body
Physiotherapists are experts in human anatomy and analyzing movement. By starting with a full movement assessment, they can help dancers discover their strengths and limitations. Whether you need longer extensions, higher leaps and jumps, improved balance for holds and turns or enough endurance to get through choreography, the physiotherapy assessment is the first step to understanding the gap between the creative intent and physical capacity. Movement assessments should include an in-depth review of your story and dance history, including previous injuries and current training schedule. The assessment can examine neuromuscular control, balance, strength, flexibility and muscle imbalances while completing a dance-specific functional screen, dance technique review and movement pattern analysis.
Goal setting
Dancers should collaborate with physiotherapists to set specific, realistic and achievable goals. This might be strengthening the foot and ankle to improve balance, increasing hip mobility to allow a certain body shape or working on the cardiovascular capacity to stay onstage for a longer piece. By combining the dancer’s creative intent with the findings of the movement assessment, the dancer and physiotherapist can determine where the dancer’s skills and abilities may need development, the timeline needed to make these improvements and if a certain movement goal is achievable in order to express the current aesthetic aim.
Building capacity, facility and strength
Some dance projects explore the physical extremes of the human body in motion. This may require dancers to develop new abilities, learn new movement patterns or improve a skill in order to better mirror other cast members. Physiotherapists can design personalized programs based on the collaborative goal-setting exercise to enhance dancers’ flexibility, strength and resilience. This enables dancers to execute more challenging movements, explore new styles, innovate within their art form and achieve their best performance abilities.
Injury prevention and management
An injury during the creative process or just before a performance could have a significant impact on the creation and repetition of choreography. Physiotherapists work proactively to prevent injuries by identifying potential risks in a dancer’s movements. They also play a vital role in rehabilitation, guiding dancers back to their peak physical condition after an injury. By addressing and preventing physical issues, we can create a safer space for dancers to explore creative boundaries.
Building a partnership with a physiotherapist early in the creative process can contribute to artistry by fostering a strong, flexible and resilient physical foundation. This collaboration between the physiotherapist and the dancer is an art in itself, an intricate balance between science and creativity.
This column is sponsored by physiotherapist Geneviève Renaud and was originally published in the Winter 2024 issue.
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