Components of Pre-professional/Adolescent Dance Screens: What Should We Include?

Increasingly, best practice in dance healthcare includes preseason screening. But do preseason screenings give us useful information? Can they provide assessment of injury risk? Can we use a common screen for all athletes or need ones specific to dancers? What is the purpose of screening and what tests are appropriate for adolescent dancers? In this editorial, I make recommendations based on over 20 years of experience screening pre-professional and professional dancers.

Ukrainian Performing Artists Inspire.

Russia invaded the Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The atrocities perpetuated by invading Russian soldiers seized the world's attention in images captured by photojournalists on the ground in Bucha, Ukraine, in April 2022. We cannot look away.

Injury characteristics in professional modern dancers: A 15-year analysis of work-related injury rates and patterns.

We investigated work-related-musculoskeletal-injuries (WMSI) over 15-years in professional modern dancers to determine injury rate and pattern differences due to sex and professional-experience. Injuries were coded to allow analyses by tissue-type, body-region, severity, setting, mechanism, action-causation, and repertory-style. Injury prevalence (IP) was defined as average risk of injury/dancer.

The Dance Functional Outcome Survey: Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Validation in Italian (DFOS-IT).

Objective: To translate, culturally adapt, and validate the psychometric characteristics of the Italian version of the Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS-IT) in adult dancers.

Design: Clinical measurement study.

Methods: The DFOS-IT was forward translated, reconciled, backward translated, and reviewed by an expert committee to establish optimal correspondence with the original English DFOS.

Injury Characteristics in Pre-Professional Modern Dancers - Prospective Study of Differences Due to Sex, Training Year, and External Causal Mechanisms.

As efforts to improve surveillance and decrease injury rates in pre-professional dancer's progress, it is important to identify injury patterns and contexts. The aim of this study was to examine sex, training-based injury characteristics, and external causal mechanisms of injury among pre-professional modern dancers. Using a prospective cohort study design, 180 dancers (females = 140, males = 40, age 18.

Inter- and Intra-Rater Reliability of Handheld Dynamometry for Lower Extremity Strength Testing in Pre-Professional Dancers.

Handheld dynamometry (HHD) using external fixation has demonstrated high inter- and intra-rater reliability. Handheld dynamometry offers an objective way to quantify strength; however, setting up external stabilization devices for HHD can be time consuming. This study examined the reliability of HHD for lower extremity strength in dancers using body weight stabilization.

The Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS) is Reliable, Valid, and Responsive in Pediatric Dancers.

The Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS) is a dance-specific questionnaire developed for use with ballet and modern dancers at all training levels. To date, no study has assessed the psychometric properties of the DFOS in pediatric dancers. The purposes of this study were to determine: 1.

Reliability of a Barre-Mounted Dynamometer-Stabilizing Device in Measuring Dance-Specific Muscle Performance.

Background: Hand-held dynamometry is considered an efficient, effective, and portable means of objectively measuring lower extremity strength; however, it has yet to be studied specific to dance-relevant muscle performance. Also, dynamometry is often criticized for variability in results based on tester strength and sex. Use of an external stabilizing device has been suggested to minimize differences in outcomes between male and female testers by reducing variability associated with tester strength limitations.

Here's To Our Community.

Memorialized in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's children's book entitled It Takes a Village, "it takes a village to raise a child" is an African proverb that means an entire community of people must interact with children for those children to experience and grow in a safe and healthy environment. The need of the artist to create is undeniable and their villages continue to support them. During these dark days of the COVID-10 pandemic, performing and fine artists have been denied their traditional communication with their public as theaters and museums closed down throughout the world.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS) for Spanish Dancers.

A growing number of research papers regarding Spanish-speaking dancers justifies the need for an adapted Spanish version of the Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS). The objective of this study was to cross-culturally adapt and validate the DFOS for Spanish-speaking dancers. A sample of 127 healthy and injured professional and pre-professional dancers were recruited.

Intra- and Inter-Rater Reliability of a Ballet-based Dance Technique Screening Instrument.

Objectives: To investigate intra- and inter-rater reliability of a ballet-based Dance Technique Screening Instrument used by physical therapists (PTs) and student PTs (SPTs) with prior dance medicine or dance experience.

Methods: Ten pre-professional dancers were video-recorded in the sagittal and frontal planes while performing four dance sequences: 1) second position grand plié; 2) développé à la seconde; 3) single-limb passé relevé balance; and 4) jumps in first position. Dance videos and electronic versions of the demographics and scoring forms were provided through a secure online survey to 28 PTs and SPTs who served as raters.

Ankle Injuries in Dancers.

The term dance encompasses a broad range of different styles; much of the orthopaedic literature has focused on ballet dancers. Injury is common in dancers at all levels, and many serious dancers sustain multiple injuries as they progress through their career. Foot and ankle injuries are among the most common injuries experienced by dancers.

Dance Functional Outcome Survey: Development and Preliminary Analyses.

The Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS) was developed as a self-report questionnaire for healthy and injured ballet and modern dancers, focusing on the low back and lower extremities. Our aim was to determine factor analysis and internal consistency of the 16 items and to investigate test-retest and equivalence reliability and validity of the DFOS compared to three orthopedic outcomes instruments. Data were collected from 80 healthy and injured adult ballet and modern pre-professional and professional dancers.

Removing Boundaries to Enhance Communication Between People.

Regardless of your view of national or global politics, we are living through an era of toxic partisan rhetoric. From belligerent tweets on Twitter to "fake news" on Facebook and Instagram, where is this taking us? It is so easy to misunderstand a text and even an email. I've been thinking about the artists we work with and what we do in our professional lives.

Psychometric Properties of the Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS): Reliability, Validity, and Responsiveness.

Background: There are no outcomes measures that focus on the unique functional requirements of dancers.

Objectives: To evaluate test-retest reliability, internal consistency, construct validity, sensitivity, and responsiveness of the Dance Functional Outcome Survey (DFOS) in professional and preprofessional adult dancers.

Methods: This prospective cohort study examined test-retest reliability of the DFOS in 198 healthy and injured dancers over 2 weeks, using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).

Risk factors for musculoskeletal injury in elite pre-professional modern dancers: A prospective cohort prognostic study.

Objectives: To examine risk factors for injury in pre-professional modern dancers.

Design: With prospectively designed screening and injury surveillance, we evaluated four risk factors as categorical predictors of injury: i) hypermobility; ii) dance technique motor-control; iii) muscle tightness; iv) previous injury. Screening and injury data of 180 students enrolled in a university modern dance program were reviewed over 4-yrs of training.

Musculoskeletal injuries in professional modern dancers: a prospective cohort study of 15 years.

We analysed work-related musculoskeletal injuries (WMSI) in two modern dance companies to determine whether injury rates decreased and patterns altered compared to previous 3-yr and 6-yr audits (0.48 and 0.25/1000-hrs exposure respectively).

Impact of touring, performance schedule, and definitions on 1-year injury rates in a modern dance company.

There is ongoing debate about how to define injury in dance: the most encompassing one or a time-loss definition. We examined the relationship between touring, performance schedule and injury definition on injury rates in a professional modern dance company over one-year. In-house healthcare management tracked 35 dancers for work-related musculoskeletal injuries (WMSI), time-loss injuries (TLinj), complaints, and exposure.

Differences in Preseason Aerobic Fitness Screening in Professional and Pre-professional Modern Dancers.

The aerobic demands of today's dance repertoire warrant understanding of the current cardiorespiratory fitness of dancers. The purpose of this study was to compare aerobic fitness levels of professional and pre-professional modern dancers and determine change over time. A retrospective analysis of four groups, two professional, and two pre-professional, was conducted in preseason annual screens, occurring before the professional dancers' rehearsal period and the students' academic training.

Conservative Management of Second Metatarsophalangeal Joint Instability in a Professional Dancer: A Case Report.

Study Design: Case report.

Background: Professional ballet and modern dancers spend an inordinate amount of time on demi pointe (rising onto their forefeet), placing excessive force on the metatarsophalangeal joints and putting them at risk of instability. Surgical treatment of this condition is well described in the literature.

Motor learning and modulation of prefrontal cortex: an fNIRS assessment.

Objective: Prefrontal hemodynamic responses are observed during performance of motor tasks. Using a dance video game (DVG), a complex motor task that requires temporally accurate footsteps with given visual and auditory cues, we investigated whether 20 h of DVG training modified hemodynamic responses of the prefrontal cortex in six healthy young adults.

Approach: Fronto-temporal activity during actual DVG play was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) pre- and post-training.

Extreme Kinematics in Selected Hip Hop Dance Sequences.

Hip hop dance has many styles including breakdance (breaking), house, popping and locking, funk, streetdance, krumping, Memphis jookin', and voguing. These movements combine the complexity of dance choreography with the challenges of gymnastics and acrobatic movements. Despite high injury rates in hip hop dance, particularly in breakdance, to date there are no published biomechanical studies in this population.

Biomechanical metrics of aesthetic perception in dance.

The brain may be tuned to evaluate aesthetic perception through perceptual chunking when we observe the grace of the dancer. We modelled biomechanical metrics to explain biological determinants of aesthetic perception in dance. Eighteen expert (EXP) and intermediate (INT) dancers performed développé arabesque in three conditions: (1) slow tempo, (2) slow tempo with relevé, and (3) fast tempo.

fMRI Validation of fNIRS Measurements During a Naturalistic Task.

We present a method to compare brain activity recorded with near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a dance video game task to that recorded in a reduced version of the task using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Recently, it has been shown that fNIRS can accurately record functional brain activities equivalent to those concurrently recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging for classic psychophysical tasks and simple finger tapping paradigms. However, an often quoted benefit of fNIRS is that the technique allows for studying neural mechanisms of complex, naturalistic behaviors that are not possible using the constrained environment of fMRI.

Physiological and psychophysiological responses to an exer-game training protocol.

Objectives: Exer-games and virtual reality offer alternative opportunities to provide neuro-rehabilitation and exercise that are fun. Our goal was to determine how effective they are in achieving motor learning goals and fitness benefits as players gain experience.

Design: We employed a repeated measures design to determine changes in physical exertion and engagement with training.