Pointe at BASEM
Students at The Royal Ballet School (RBS) in Covent Garden spend three academic years developing their dance skills and performance with the ambition of graduating having secured a contract as a professional dancer. Since injury can have a devastating impact on a student’s potential career, the multidisciplinary sport and exercise medicine care provided on site at the RBS aims both to prevent injury where possible and to deliver effective rehabilitation.
ISEH consultant Dr Ian McCurdie presented at the British Association of Sport & Exercise Medicine (BASEM) and Faculty of Sport & Exercise Medicine (FSEM) Combined Annual Conference in Edinburgh in October. He presented data on the range and number of injuries sustained by pre-professional ballet dancers with specific reference to those at the RBS, where he works as a member of the medical team. His presentation, part of a wider session on Dance Medicine, included a brief history of ballet and the RBS, alongside patterns of injury incidence (including dance and practice time lost) relating to injury at the RBS.
Pre-professional ballet appears to be less hazardous than professional ballet, with 1.4 injuries per 1,000 hours of dance recorded, as opposed to 4.4 injuries per 1,000 in professional dancers, although around 50 per cent of professional ballet dancers in one survey attributed their current symptoms to an injury sustained before the age of 18.
Injuries to bones and joints are more common than those of muscles and tendons, which is almost the reverse of the patterns seen in sports such as tennis and football. There also appears to be a predictable cycle of injury incidence that follows the school term timetable, with peaks in new injuries seen in the first few weeks back from holidays. As well as the more common injuries, some unusual bone injuries, rarely seen in sport, can occur among ballet dancers.
The ISEH hosts part of the UCL Performing Arts Medicine MSc. The Masters’ Degree is a unique programme, providing specialised training in Performing Arts Medicine to clinicians interested or already involved in treating musicians, singers, dancers, actors and other performing artists.