Professional Dancers Face High Injury Risks During Daily Practice

9 hours ago

Professional creation is simply a high-performance subject that carries important risks of wounded and beingness wear. Researchers astatine Goethe University Frankfurt person now provided nan first precise measurements of strain connected nan musculoskeletal system. The study progressive 28 master dancers wearing sensor-equipped suits during ballet training. The information revealed precocious levels of strain crossed each phases of training. The findings support nan improvement of wounded prevention measures and item nan precocious beingness demands of nan profession.

Ballet is an creation of illusion: dancers look to float crossed nan shape and, successful their leaps, look to defy gravity for a moment. The effort down this lightness and grace usually remains invisible to audiences.

Professional creation is simply a high-performance sport. It requires exceptional beingness power and athleticism, developed done galore years of intensive training."

Professor Eileen Wanke, Institute of Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt

Wanke brings individual acquisition to this research, having antecedently performed arsenic a master dancer. Today, she examines her erstwhile section from a aesculapian perspective. The beingness demands of training, rehearsals, and performances return a clear toll: astir half of each dancers acquisition astatine slightest 1 occupational mishap each year. Common injuries see strains and sprains affecting nan legs, ankles, and feet, arsenic good arsenic little backmost problems. Many proceed moving contempt pain, driven by their committedness to nan profession. By their precocious twenties, 25 percent person already developed osteoarthritis - a precocious number compared to good beneath 5 percent successful nan wide population.

Sensor-equipped suits

Objective measurements of nan beingness demands of master creation person truthful acold been scarce. The caller study addresses this spread and was conducted successful collaboration pinch nan German Dance Film Institute Bremen and nan mishap security institutions of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, and Lower Saxony. For information collection, Wanke and her squad - together pinch Austrian physicist and biomechanist Dr. Christian Maurer-Grubinger - utilized an innovative method: 16 female and 12 antheral dancers from Oldenburg State Theater and Theater Kiel wore sensor-equipped suits during training. These recorded acceleration and assemblage positioning for nan head, torso, arms, wrists, legs, and feet astatine a complaint of 240 measurements per second. The information were transmitted wirelessly to a machine for analysis.

"We utilized a strategy wide applied successful occupational medicine to measure beingness strain," Wanke explains. "Typically, trained observers measure characteristic movements successful circumstantial professions, for illustration done video analysis. In our approach, information are alternatively captured by a programme developed specifically for this project." Each activity aliases posture is assigned a score: nan greater nan strain connected joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons, nan higher nan "Rapid Entire Body Assessment" - aliases REBA - score.

Risk of wounded during training

"Our participants spent much than 60 percent of their training clip successful a moderate-risk, and a further 30 percent successful a high-risk range," Wanke says. Even during training, nan level of consequence is truthful sizeable - though training is intended not only to support method but besides to forestall injuries. Female dancers spent much clip successful higher-risk ranges than their antheral counterparts and were frankincense exposed, connected average, to greater ergonomic stress. This whitethorn partially beryllium explained by differences successful assemblage structure, meaning that definite movements aliases postures spot greater strain connected them.

Classical creation training has changed small complete nan past 300 years. It follows a three-phase structure: Phase 1 consists of exercises astatine nan barre, while Phases 2 and 3 return spot successful unfastened abstraction - opening pinch slow activity sequences, followed by pirouettes, and culminating successful ample jumps. As nan training progresses, nan exercises go progressively dynamic, placing greater demands connected nan cardiovascular strategy arsenic good arsenic connected concentration, coordination, and beingness control. "Studies show that attraction tends to diminution successful Phase 3, starring to much predominant errors and inaccuracies," explains Wanke.

Optimization opportunities

Overall, nan information propose that peculiarly demanding move exercises should beryllium scheduled earlier successful training sessions, arsenic is communal successful different sports. Training could besides beryllium adapted successful a much gender-specific measurement to bespeak differing beingness demands. Organizational changes astatine capacity venues whitethorn further thief trim nan consequence of wounded and wear-related conditions. During jumps, bones, muscles, and joints are subjected to precocious forces - particularly upon landing. Specialized creation floors tin importantly trim this strain. While galore institutions person specified flooring successful training spaces, rehearsal and capacity stages often still deficiency it.

Existing flooring whitethorn beryllium further optimized. However, which structural measures are astir effective successful reducing forces successful creation has not yet been systematically studied. "This would beryllium an important attraction for early research," Wanke concludes.

Source:

Journal reference:

Fehringer, V., et al. (2025). Ergonomic Risk Assessment of Professional Dance Using Motion Capture pinch Ergonomic Evaluation by nan Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA). Sensors. DOI: 10.3390/s26010070. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/26/1/70