Week 2: Literature Review In Progress

Welcome back! Another week, another blog post. This week, I’d like to dive into some more interesting articles I read as part of an ongoing literature review and discuss some possible connections and interpretations.    

In a 2009 article by Sides et al., injury rates are studied among collegiate modern dance students.1 While this study (in addition to many others, such as this one involving a study of children and adolescents who received emergency room treatment for dance-related injuries) notes that a majority of classical dance injuries affect the lower extremity, Sides et al. also found a greater amount of upper extremity injuries than expected. Particularly, shoulder injury rates were observed to be rather high, to which the study accounts for the dramatic and novel choreography in modern dance (stunts such as handstands and falls) that is not seen in ballet.  This caught my attention. From what I’ve seen through both first-hand experience performing at competitions and second-hand experience viewing videos of competition dance routines online, the “wow factor” plays a large role in competitive dance. Whether through highly dramatized facial expressions, unique music choice, satisfying formations, or (quite commonly) stunts, competitive dance routines contain many components designed to make the judges and audience wowed, if executed wonderfully. But as dance competitions have become more, well, competitive (as Schupp3 describes, competitive dance culture has over the years shifted from recreational into “serious leisure”), the desire for this “wow factor” has only increased. Stunts are more physics-defying than ever, and as such, the danger of performing these stunts is a cause for concern as well.  

Even outside of modern dance and competition, aesthetics continue to be prioritized over safety in general by many dancers (for another example, just check out “ballet banana feet” on Google). I hope with this project, I’ll be able to have an impact prompting more discussion of this issue.   

1. Sides SN, Ambegaonkar JP, Caswell SV. High Incidence Of Shoulder Injuries In Collegiate Modern Dance Students. Athl Ther Today. 2009; 14(4):43-46. Doi:10.1123/ATT.14.4.43.  
2. Roberts KJ, Nelson NG, McKenzie L. Dance-Related Injuries In Children And Adolescents Treated In US Emergency Departments In 1991–2007. J Phys Activity Health.  2013;10:143-150. 
3. Schupp K. I Can’t. I Have Dance: Dance Competition Culture As Serious Leisure And Pre-Professional Training. Leisure Studies. 2020;39(4):479-492. Doi:10.1080/02614367.2019.1643902.