Injuries in Dance

In the world of dance, injuries are a very common thing. Anything from bruises to pulled muscles to sprained ankles and everything in between. Injuries are definitely something that dancers try to avoid like the plague because it could mean the difference of being able to perform or having to watch from the wings. However, every once in a while an injury will spring itself upon a dancer.

A lot of injuries that tend to occur are related to knees, ankles, and feet. What a shocker, dancers get injuries that involve their legs. Some common injuries that appear are bruised toe nails, blisters, pulled muscles, and sprained ankle/ foot. In fact, I recently experienced an injury that couldn't have come at a worse time.

About a week and a half before my big RAD exams were coming up. During a class of mine we were doing our across the floor exercises and long story short I ended up landing a leap wrong and hurt my foot pretty severally. At first I didn't think anything of it because I had landed wrong before, but I was fine after a couple of minutes. However, this time the pain didn't really go away. So when I got home I iced it and did everything you were suppose to. I continued that for the next five days, but my foot was showing to progress. I was getting really scared especially as my exam date was approaching. I continued to ice it and elevate it up until the hour before my exam. My foot still showed no progress. So long story short, I had to take my hour and a half exam where we had to jump, balance and perform a few pointe exercises, with a foot that was in pain. It was definitely not a pleasant feeling, but I needed to do it.

That is another thing about injuries in dance. Often dancers will perform with injuries. I was watching a short documentary about a dancer with the Bolshoi, that severely hurt her foot right before a huge performance that would ultimately determine her career. As time went on her foot wasn't getting better, so she ended up performing with her injury.

Although no dancer ever wants to have an injury, it is something that we face sooner or later. The best thing a dancer can do is to be safe in the first place to avoid injury and if you still happen to get injured, just give it the proper care right away.