IADMS Miami 2000   [back to the Category]

Physical Characteristics in a Group of Adolescent Ballet Students: A Three Year Study   [read the french version]

Author :   Luana Poggini, M.D., Ph.D.

Author: Luana Poggini, M.D., Ph.D., Accademia Nazionale Di Danza, Rome, Italy

According to the recent interest of the dance educators and the health care specialists to the specific needs of the adolescent dancers, at the “Accademia Nazionale di Danza” (AND) of Rome we started, in October 1997, a more detailed dance-medicine oriented annual screening on our beginner dance students.

This screening was based, with few modifications, on the reported “Israel Medicine Center Dance Medical Screening Form” described by Siev-Ner and colleagues in the Journal of Dance Medicine & Science (Volume 1, Number 3, 1997). The aim of this screening was to learn more about the physical characteristic of our students during the adolescence, to better define risk factors to prevent injuries and, when possible, to organize personalized programs during the “ballet-support” classes.

The screening form was chosen because of the simplicity of the collection of data, thus offering quite complete information on the dancers’ physical profile without the need of sophisticated instrumentation.

Seven major categories could be distinguished among the evaluated parameters: 1) personal history information (date of birth, gender, illness and hospitalization, medications, menses, etc.); 2) dance history (age of starting dance, type of dance, pointe work, week schedule of dance work name of teachers, etc.); 3) general physical examination (weight, height, shoe size, leg length, etc.); 4) range of motion data (with special attention to the spine, the hip, and foot and ankle range of motion); 5) postural alignment data (knee varus/valgus, lordosis, kyphosis, scoliosis, etc.); 6) past injuries (dance and non-dance related); 7) basic technical errors (rolling in, melding, hyperlordosis, etc.).

During the past two scholastic years 185 dance-screening forms were collected from the students of the first three ballet classes of the AND: 96 during the 1997-1998 and 89 during the 1998-1999 school terms. There were 39 students (36 females and 3 males) in the 10 to 11 year old group (first ballet class) enrolled in this program in October 1997: their number is actually reduced to 21 (18 females and 3 males). Eighteen of them (15 females and 3 males) are frequenting the third ballet class but 4 females, since they failed the first class examination, are still frequenting the second ballet class.

The complete data regarding the three years follow up of 21 dance students will be presented with special emphasis on analyzing their morphological changes during the growth spurts period (in weight and height, decreasing of spine and leg flexibility, decreasing of period, increasing external rotation at the hips, etc.) and in trying to identity the connection between these changes and the students’ dance ability.

During the course of this evaluation, the students’ physical profiles obtained by these forms were also analyzed with the dance teachers and physiotechnique teacher; this has helped, in some cases, to better personalize by using specific awareness exercises and stretching exercises – both the ballet and the “dance-support” classes.

This is the abstract of a paper presented at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science, held 27-29 October 2000 in Miami, Florida, USA. All rights are reserved by the individual author(s).