7 Commonly Occuring Dance Injuries
Dancers hone one of the world’s greatest skills. A blend of creativity and athleticism, dancing involves a high element of technique and performance and requires a high level of discipline. Along with these facts, dancers also experience a high risk of injury: “There are numerous epidemiologic studies of dance injuries, with injury incidence of 40% to 80% depending on the level of participation, and a lifetime incidence of up to 90% for all dancers.” (Macintyre, 2000) Basically, if you dance on a long-term or lifelong basis, there’s a 90% chance that you will experience some sort of dancing related injury at one point or another. This is a hard truth in the dancing realm and it involves all genres of dance. Some forms of dance have higher elements of risk than others. Ballet is an example in which ankle and knee injuries are common, whereas modern dance such as hip-hop and break-dancing are more prone to lower back injuries and strains. Some injuries are minor, while some may end a dancer’s career. It is also pertinent to examine the relationship between the dancer’s ability and the competitions that may force dancers to push their limits of those abilities. Focusing on the notoriously typical and all together most debilitating impairments, here are the 7 most common encumbering dance injuries.