Everyone thinks that dancers are more often injured than healthy. But the truth is a bit more complicated.
You have to imagine that every day you use your body as an instrument down to the smallest detail. Every muscle, every bone, every tendon and every nerve pathway is strained. Everything has to be retuned every day and function independently of temperature, humidity or air pressure. It's like a piano or a violin.
Not to mention emotional and psychological states. Resilience and flexibility are vital here in order not to buckle at every little thing.
While in sport, a lack of or reduced performance can lead to failure, which can of course have a negative impact on the team, the results, the table or even the economic prospects, this is always negotiable. Losing is part of sport.
In stage dance, the approach is different: it takes into account all aspects of the fact that the loss of a dancer has a rat's tail of consequences for everyone involved. Laborious rehearsals, artistic adjustments. The paying public does not want to see a work of art that is presented incorrectly, incompletely or marked.
A little carelessness, the wrong hand outstretched and the dance partner falls to the floor because they haven't caught it. Once they have walked in the wrong direction, a body crash can occur. The balance is off and the fall is inevitable.
The fact that dancers often go beyond their limits, seem to ignore injuries at first or treat themselves is usually because they don't want to embarrass their colleagues, the choreographers and, above all, the audience.
Have you ever seen a dancer during a performance who is so introverted that they can't even be seen on stage while the live voice comes from offstage?
It's a balancing act for everyone involved: dancers, choreographers and ensemble directors. To keep going for an entire season, all year round, so we're a long way from training breaks like in high-performance sport, is a remarkable achievement. And yet dancers must be allowed to pull the emergency brake in good time so as not to cause irreparable damage to their body, mind and soul.
Today's training programmes are much better than in the past.
We will stay tuned.
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