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HERE'S A POP QUIZ: WHO HAS TO BE able to lift 100 pounds, sometimes repeatedly, doing it beautifully, gracefully, and musically, with perfect form--and no grimacing allowed? You guessed it: It's a male dancer, especially in ballet. Sure, there are plenty of athletes out there who can heft more than their body weight--but they get to focus on only the lifting. Doing such movement within the context of an art form is a challenge unique to dancers.

Lifting a living, moving being is far more difficult than hoisting a barbell with a constant weight. Dancers have to lift partners of varying sizes, often within one ballet--partners whose costumes and sweaty, bare skin can make it harder to lift them properly. Then, too, barbells don't coming hurtling at you from across the stage, expecting you to toss them in the air. The variables are daunting. What's required are strength, second-nature response, and proper training.

Prevailing thinking long held that dancers only had to dance more to correct problems, says Peter Marshall, company physical therapist for American Ballet Theatre. Dancers everywhere did few activities outside of ballet, worrying that gym workouts would make them look like the Incredible Hulk. Yet their injuries persisted, with the lower back especially vulnerable. Without sufficient power in his shoulders and arms to do overhead lifts, a dancer might jerk his partner overhead, straining his lower back.

By the mid-1990s, dance medicine began to take cues from sports medicine, according to Marshall. Alternate forms of training became more acceptable, physical therapists started working with dancers at an earlier age, and dancers became more knowledgeable.

Jock Soto, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, has seen the mind-set toward preventative therapy change, as companies began to use chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, and athletic trainers. "People got more health conscious and wanted ways of getting stronger," Soto says. "So many dancers were getting injured. To prevent this, you had to join the club."

Therapists realize that preserving the long, lean "look" of a male dancer will figure into treatment. They work with dancers over the long haul in order to bring them back with maximum range of motion, Marshall says.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:40 AM