Promoting Health and Wellness for All Dancers

The physical and psychological wellness of dance teachers and their students has long been a topic of concern in dance education. Dance teachers and students often engage in many hours of strenuous physical, mental, and emotional activities during the day—such as taking or teaching performance and other movement classes, participating in cross-training activities (at a gym and elsewhere), working on curriculum planning, or attending other classes and rehearsals. Additionally, everyone needs to attend to personal or family obligations. Dancers require ways to sustain their stamina, stay healthy, and avoid injury. Also, maintaining motivation and a positive attitude can be challenging in the face of a whole host of stressors—from difficulties in one’s homelife, to anxiety about an upcoming audition, to concern over a recurring injury, to general feelings of inadequacy.

I am drawn to topics of health and wellness from my perspective as a dance educator in postsecondary education; attending my college’s May 2023 commencement ceremony deepened my interest. This year’s seniors—half-way through the second semester of their first year of college—were sent home to continue their education over Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic; studying dance without one’s community of practitioners was a major shift for students. At that time, public awareness of White on Black racial violence escalated; just prior to “lockdown,” Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor were killed. Nine weeks after, George Floyd was murdered. The confluence of these events, in tandem with the prevailing lack of civility in US political discourse, built a steep rise in the need for educators, students, and the citizenry to put greater focus and effort on their wellness.

This Special Issue of the Journal of Dance Education is centered on three aspects of dancer wellness: mental, emotional, and physical. The Global Wellness Institute (n.d.) defines wellness as “the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health”—noting that wellness has numerous dimensions including (but not limited to) mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, and environmental. More specifically, dancer wellness, as described by Downie—one of the authors featured in this issue—“is generally accepted to be about promoting safe and effective dance training, encouraging healthy lifestyles and optimal conditioning, providing injury prevention treatment and rehabilitation information or services, and giving dancers tools to develop and use self-care strategies” (2022, 2).

How important is the topic of dancer wellness, and of hearing from this Special Issue’s authors about their wellness endeavors? To answer that question with “Very!” all l I need to do is to notice that I am wearing a shirt from New York City’s Dance Education Lab which reads: DANCE FOR EVERY CHILD. I wear this shirt often because it displays a belief that I am passionate about; I am passionate because I know that dancing helps children develop their imaginations, self-discipline, self-expression, trust, awareness of their bodies, and so much more. Passion is great, but it’s not enough. As dance educators, along with imparting our passion for dance to our students, we have an enormous responsibility to prioritize teaching students—of any age—to take care of themselves so they can dance for as long as they wish.

Dancer wellness is not a new topic, starting well before my own introduction in 1984 when the University of Oregon, where I had just completed a master’s degree in dance, hosted the Olympic Scientific Congress. My professor, Dr. Caroline G. Caine, oversaw the dance science aspect of the event. Presentation topics included the prevention of dance injuries (Ruth Solomon and Lyle Micheli), the role of body therapies in motor performance and expressivity (Martha Myers), and knee and ankle injuries (Carol Teitz); presentations were published in the conference proceedings (Shell 1986). My first inroad to somatics, in 1988, was through Bartenieff Fundamentals®—one of many somatics practices that have been instrumental in enhancing dancer wellness. Anne Green Gilbert developed BrainDance in 2000—her somatic approach to teaching dance to children, based on her studies in Bartenieff Fundamentals®, neurodevelopmental movement therapy, and neurocellular patterns (Creative Dance Center, n.d.). Professional organizations such as the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (founded in 1988), the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries (founded in 1989), and the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (founded in 1990) have brought leadership and quality research to the field of dancer wellness. However, despite the growth of the field of dancer wellness, Cardinal, Rogers, and Cardinal—university professors in the fields of dancer wellness, sport exercise, and conditioning—write that “ … health-related problems of dancers, such as musculoskeletal injuries, nutritional deficits, and psychological constraints remain” (2020, 73). All areas of dancer wellness still need our attention and as noted below, the COVID-19 pandemic intensified educators’ awareness of them.

From my current experiences with students—both dancers and the general student population—I know that it is imperative to start addressing issues of wellness well before college. It is challenging for me to see a dance student who—during years of taking dance classes prior to college—has not been given (or not taken) the advice to refrain from (for example) hyperextending their knees; by the time they are in my class the student is in constant pain from joint damage, so I work with them on strengthening and alignment. I am a compassionate listener for my students when they are in emotional crisis. But my skills can go just so far, and I frequently refer students to a physical therapist or walk them to the college counseling center. I would like to be able to do more for my students and the articles in this issue offer a variety of inroads.

To clarify the need for dance educators to focus on wellness, I offer some sobering statistics about the mental health of children, youth, and college students. Caron (2022) writes that, “According to the Centers of [sic] Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1 in 3 high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2019, representing a 40% increase since 2009.” Considering the psychological health of children, one’s tendency may be to blame COVID-19 for its increase. But in fact, according to the US surgeon general, the numbers of children and young adults who were struggling with depression and anxiety were increasing prior to the pandemic. According to Tingley (2022), “Between 2013 and 2019, A.D.H.D. and anxiety were the most common mental disorders among those 3 to 17 years old, with each condition affecting roughly one in 11 children, according to the C.D.C. [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. More than one in five 12- to 17-year-olds experienced a major depressive episode.” Educators in public and private schools and independent dance studios have a unique opportunity, through dance, to strengthen students’ psychological health.

For collegiate dancers, injuries, eating disorders, and mental health concerns are common and the interplay between mental health, sleep, nutrition, and injury is substantial; the combined athletic and aesthetic nature of performance and the demands of academic requirements are additional stressors, as noted in a study by Michaels et al. (2023)—a group of researchers that includes the professions of athletic trainer, sports medicine physician, professor of rehabilitation, physical therapist, and sports dietitian. What all of this points to is that, in our dance education environments—particularly with children, adolescents, and young adults—we need to apply pedagogical strategies that attend to all aspects of our students’ wellness. And if we don’t currently have the strategies, we must find the resources we need.

I want to emphasize that, as mentioned above, there is a substantial interrelationship between physical and mental health. In this Special Issue, whether an article’s focus is on physical or mental health, I believe readers will be able to take away a range of ideas regarding dancer wellness from the eight articles—which cover several student populations and dance education contexts. Four articles focus on college-age and adult dancers. Two focus on adolescents. One engages adults reflecting on children’s participation in competitive dance. One article is focused on all ages. Two articles center around ballet students, one centers on both ballet and contemporary dancers, and five that are open to all genres of dance. I have found the information in these articles to be relevant and enlightening across age groups, environments, and genres.

The issue opens with an In Practice Article. In “Do No Harm: Lessons from Community-Engaged Learning Applied to Community Dance” Valerie Ifill offers insights to educators for working with students who are preparing to teach in university-community contexts or community dance programs. Ifill highlights concepts which can be explored in all teaching contexts, with a particular eye to teaching environments where there are racial and socioeconomic differences between the teachers or facilitators of the classes and community participants in the dance class.

Next are six Feature Articles. In “The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Dance Freelancers in the United Kingdom” Maria Kolitsida, Jennifer Cumming, Anna Lavis, and Erin Sanchez offer recommendations for the mental health and well-being of freelance dancers in the United Kingdom. The authors look at (a) fair working environments, (b) building trust and communication between dance freelancers and those in positions of power, (c) opportunities for social connectedness, and (d) comprehensive support based on a dancer-informed view of mental health.

América Irma Stackpole and Angélica Quiroga-Garza describe a study in which they worked with 16 conservatory dance students using Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) to reduce levels of performance anxiety. In “Overcoming Stage Anxiety with a Solution-Focused Approach,” the authors suggest that dance teachers incorporate these techniques into their teaching to not only manage their students’ anxiety but also increase students’ emotional intelligence.

In “Dance Wellness Pedagogy: How Fitness-Focused Education Can Inform Dancer Wellness in the Post-Secondary Classroom” Lisa Drew and Pamela Kulinna describe their experiment with a wellness curriculum in a university-level dance setting. The results included improvement of participants’ exercise science literacy, their understanding of wellness, and their ability to apply exercise and wellness content to their dance training and personal lives.

Courtney Liu, in “The Challenges and Possibilities of Flow as a Foil to Self-Objectification in the Ballet Classroom” focuses on characteristics of Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) concept of “flow” in her pedagogical research. Liu proposes that a pedagogy of flow can de-emphasize the importance of perfection for ballet students, thereby reducing self-objectification and its related issues of body image distress and eating disorders.

Lisa Sandlos’ article “‘In the Land of Dance’: Unpacking the Effects of Sexualization on the Wellbeing of Girls in Competitive Dance” challenges the normalization of sexualized dancing by young girls within the world of competitive dance. Sandlos promotes the ideas of (a) private dance studios offering dancers opportunities for education, reflection, and discussion about sexualized norms in the media and at competitions and (b) encouraging girls to explore these issues in conversations with parents, dance teachers, and peers to expand their self-identity.

This Special Issue closes with two Feature Articles that have been available as advance online publications. In the article “Equity-Informed Dancer Wellness” Andrea Downie recommends a way to embrace and promote social justice and healthy dance practice through a particular concept of dancer wellness—one that acknowledges intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural contributions to safety, health, and wellness. “Feldendrais to Improve Interoceptive Processes and Psychological Well-being in Female Adolescent Ballet Dancers: A Feasibility Study” is by Amie Wallman-Jones, Claudia Mölders, Mirko Schmidt, and Andrea Schärli. The authors propose the use of the Feldenkrais Method® to improve adolescent dancers’ interoceptive ability—which is the capacity to perceive the internal state of the body. This improved ability leads to greater physical and psychological well-being.

As elucidated by the articles in this Special Issue, there are many inroads to dancers’ health and wellness, and I feel as if we have just scratched the surface. I hope readers are inspired to investigate some of these authors’ ideas in their own teaching practice, and to also research this topic in their own unique ways, to add to the collective wisdom of caring for our students. I thank all who submitted manuscripts for their work in this important field.