Dance Injuries: Reducing Risk and Maximizing Performance

Across dance genres, the rigors of training and performing can take a toll on a dancer’s mind and body, leading to injuries. Dance Injuries: Reducing Risk and Maximizing Performance presents a holistic wellness model and in-depth coverage of how to reduce the risk of injury in dance and how to care for injuries properly when they do occur.

Written by an international team of experts in the dance medicine and science field, including physicians, athletic trainers, physical therapists, researchers, and dance educators, Dance Injuries provides an overview of common dance injuries across a wide variety of dance styles. From their extensive work with dancers, the authors provide valuable insight into minimizing dance injuries to maximize dancer longevity.

The text offers practical ways to reduce the risk of dance injuries. Conditioning, flexibility training, nutrition, hydration, recovery, and rest are addressed. Additionally, a chapter on holistic wellness helps dancers apply a wellness mindset to their training and performance.

Dance Injuries is richly illustrated with nearly 200 full-color illustrations and 150 photos to help dancers connect with the essential information the book offers. Armed with the understanding gained from the book’s medical diagrams, dancers will be motivated to adopt habits to reduce the likelihood of an injury.

To further augment learning, the text presents

• strategies for accessing and interpreting scientific research on dance injuries;
• approaches to working with various health care professionals when an injury occurs;
• recurring special elements, sidebars, key terms, and discussion questions; and
• resources offered online through HKPropel, including application activities, supplemental information, and coverage of niche topics connected to chapter content.

Six appendixes add to the wealth of content presented in the chapters. These provide information on international mental health resources, psychological safety in dance, screening for dancer health, disability dance and integrated dance, considerations for professional dance, and artistry and athletics.

Dance Injuries includes vital information to properly train dancers technically, physically, mentally to reduce dancers’ risk of injury and allow them to perform their best in dance classes, rehearsals, and performances.

Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is included with all new print books.

Jeffrey A. Russell, PhD, ATC, is an associate professor of athletic training and the director of Science and Health in Artistic Performance (SHAPe) at Ohio University, where he studies artists in dance, music, theater, circus, film and television, and marching band. His PhD in dance medicine and science is from the University of Wolverhampton in England. He has served on the boards of the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science and the Performing Arts Medicine Association. He is a founding board member of The Bridge Dance Project, the founder of the International Task Force on Head Impacts and Trauma in Stunts, and an ambassador and research advisor for the Australian Stunts Organisation. His international research group focuses primarily on concussions in film and television stunt performers as well as health care access for dancers in the commercial industry and on university dance teams. Other research from his lab includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the ankle in ballet dancers and the use of dance socks to reduce forces on dancers’ feet. He has published and spoken extensively on a variety of topics in performing arts medicine. Dr. Russell and his wife, Ruth, live in Athens, Ohio.