Learning About The Ankle

           “We will be in tune with our bodies only if we truly love and honor them. We can’t be in good communication with the enemy.”  -Harriet Lerner


          Dancers are athletes and, as such, their bodies endure many hours of physical activity.  The ankle joint is one that all types of dancers depend upon in order to perform.  The ankle needs to be strong enough to support the dancer and remain stable while being flexible enough to execute dance steps.

            The ankle is the site where most dance injuries occur, and it is helpful to both dancers and dance educators to understand the anatomy of this joint.

The ankle is home to two separate joints.  The actual ankle joint is formed where the tibia, the fibula, and the talus meet.   The tibia is the large bone of the lower leg that is located on the inside of the shin while the fibula is the narrow bone that is found on the outside of the shin.  The talus is the bone located on the top of the arch of the foot where the lower leg and foot meet.  This joint is a hinge joint that is responsible for the ability to plantar flex (point) and dorsiflex (flex) the foot.

From Southern California Orthopedic Institute

            The other joint that is responsible for ankle movement is the subtalar joint.  This joint is formed where the talus and the bone located beneath it, the calcaneus meet.  When these two bones glide over each other, the foot can be moved from side to side.

            The ankle is held together by a series of ligaments.  Ligaments are responsible for connecting bone to bone and for preventing certain movements that could dislocate and/or compromise the joint.

            The inside, or medial, side of the ankle is home to the deltoid ligaments and the calcaneonavicular ligament.  These ligaments connect the tibia to the talus and the calcaneus.  They are responsible for stabilizing the inside arch of the foot, holding the talus in place, and keeping the ankle from collapsing inward.

            The lateral collateral ligaments are found on the outside, or lateral side of the ankle.  The syndesmosis ligaments connect the tibia to the fibula and provide stability at the top of the ankle.  The strongest lateral ligament is the posterior talofibular ligament.  It connects the fibula to the talus and prevents the talus from slipping backwards and externally rotating.  The calcaneofibular ligament connects the fibula to the calcaneus and prevents the foot from twisting too far away from the body, or everting.  The anterior talofibular ligament connects the fibula to the talus, stabilizes the talus, and prevents the foot from twisting too far toward the body, or inverting.  This ligament tends to be the weakest lateral ligament of the ankle.

From Foot Doc

              Next week’s post will discuss ankle sprains, the frequency at which they occur in dancers, their causes, and treatment.

Dancers and Cocaine Use

            "Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other." - Martha Graham

          Dancers – they accomplish supernatural feats with their bodies, they have an extremely strong work ethic, and audiences applaud their efforts.  However, those supernatural feats take their toll on the body, the strong work ethic leads to hours and hours of class and rehearsals, and when the applause dies down, the performance high fades along with it.

            Dance is a difficult pursuit, and the stress of it can lead to eating disorders, which I have written about at length here, or substance abuse.   Cocaine abuse has been a problem within the dance community since the 1980’s.  Ballerina Gelsey Kirkland wrote candidly about it in her autobiography, Dancing On My Grave, and American Ballet Theater dancer, Patrick Bissell died of a cocaine overdose in 1987.

            Originally used as a painkiller, cocaine is made from coca leaves and usually mixed with cornstarch, talcum powder, sugar, or other drugs.  It is normally either snorted in through the nose or smoked.

            Cocaine creates a hyper vigilant state that increases alertness, creates high energy levels, decreases appetite, and creates a euphoric state.  All of these effects would seem to be advantageous for dancers.  Being alert means learning combinations quickly, lots of energy means the ability to dance at peak levels for a longer time, appetite suppression means that the dancers can control their weight without thinking so much about it, and the euphoric state replicates the high created during a performance and prevents feelings of post-performance letdown.

            Unfortunately, like most substances, cocaine also has a downside.  All of these “benefits” occur because cocaine blocks neurotransmitters from being absorbed.  Neurotransmitters are substances that line the pathways between different nerves so that impulses, or messages, can travel from the body to the brain and back again.  When absorption is blocked, a chemical build-up occurs in the body, and the neurotransmitters norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine accumulate. 

            Norepinephrine and serotonin increase heart rate and constrict blood vessels.  The increased heart rate causes breathing to increase and puts a strain on both the heart muscle and the lungs.  The constricted blood vessels increase blood pressure and limit the amount of blood that can flow to the heart, brain and digestive system.  The lack of blood flow to the heart can lead to heart attacks or irregular heartbeats, the lack of blood flow to the brain can cause a stroke, and low blood flow to the digestive system can cause ulcers.

            Additionally, cocaine use causes a breakdown in muscle tissue that is released into the bloodstream and breaks down into a substance that causes kidney damage.  If cocaine is snorted, there will be sinus tissue damage, and it if is smoked, it can result in lung tissue irritation and/or damage.

            Cocaine is a highly addictive drug and is a definite problem in the dance community.  Dance educators, directors, and dancers need to acknowledge this issue and help dancers find help if they are using it and raise awareness to prevent other dancers from following this path.

            A new short film, Ballon, seeks to do just that.  It follows a ballerina through a cocaine addiction and her journey to become healthy once again.  More information on this film can be found here.

            Any effort to keep dancers healthy needs to start with awareness and education.  By arming dancers with the knowledge of what cocaine does physiologically, we can hopefully help decrease the problem and keep them dancing longer, stronger and healthier.

Spotting & Why It Works

"You have to trust your body to take care of you." - A.J. Langer

         

 Dancers are taught to “spot” at a young age.  Hours are spent teaching this concept, visual aids are hung in studios, and many theatres have a spotting light at the back of the theatre for dancers. 

Spotting involves staring at a fixed point while the body is turning to prevent dizziness and loss of balance.  Clearly, experienced dancers believe it is a valuable tool since it is passed on through instruction, and it must work since dancers performing multiple turns on stages are able to continue dancing without pausing to regain balance or falling over.  What are the physiological reasons that spotting works?

The body uses three systems to establish balance – the proprioceptive system, the visual system, and the vestibular system.  

Proprioception is the body’s awareness of its position and movement in space.  There are sensory receptors located in the body’s muscles, tendons and joints that respond to changes in pressure and send messages to the brain letting it know where the different parts of the body are and how they are moving in relation to other body parts. 

The visual system helps determine where the body is in space.  Within this system is the body’s optical righting reflex.  This reflex helps ensure that we remain upright by working to keep both eyes on the horizontal plane. 

            The vestibular system helps the body maintain balance through the anatomy of the inner ear.  This system gives the brain information about the body’s position during movement.  The ear canals are filled with fluid and lined with cilia, or tiny hairs, that are sensitive to the movement of the fluid.  When the position of the head shifts during movement, the cilia send signals to the brain to activate the muscles that keep the head vertical.

            When a dancer is turning, obviously the body’s position in space is constantly changing, and the proprioceptive system cannot be relied upon to help establish balance until the turn is perfected.  Once it is perfected, the body's "muscle memory" (you can read more about that here)   can aid in helping the body to sense that it is balanced.  In the meantime, the body must rely upon the visual and vestibular systems.  Both of these systems involve keeping the head in a constant position that is upright and on an even horizontal plane.

            Staring at a fixed point keeps the eyes focused on one image.  If a dancer were to simply look at everything around him or her while turning, the brain would definitely be confused by all the input, but that is only a part of the equation.

It is imperative that the head be kept in a steady, level position while turning to prevent dizziness from occurring and to prevent the body from trying to “save itself”.  When the head tilts too much to one side, the visual system senses the horizontal shift, and the vestibular system signals the brain to force the body to right itself.  When this occurs, the dancer will either begin to hop to save the turn or fall out of the turn in an effort to re-establish the body’s vertical position in space.  It is important that dancers be trained to simply turn their heads while spotting and to eliminate any tilting motions.  Waiting to quickly rotate the head back to the focal point until the last possible moment will also ensure that as little movement occurs as possible.  By adding these two concepts to the idea of staring at a focal point, dancers can improve their turning technique immensely.

Our bodies have mechanisms that are useful and necessary to provide equilibrium and keep us safe on a daily basis.  It is important for dancers to understand these mechanisms so that they do not fight against them but, instead, use them to their advantage to improve technique and promote safe, healthy dancing. 

Using Knowledge of the Body to Teach More Efficiently

            "Repetition is the mother of perfection.”

                                                                             ― Ryan Straten

            In my last post, Learning and Remembering Combinations, I wrote about how the body processes new sensory information and commits it to memory.  This information is both important and extremely useful to dance educators.  By understanding how students learn motor patterns and commit them to memory, dance educators can adapt their teaching methods to create more effective classes.

            When taught, a new exercise is first committed to short-term memory.  After several repetitions the neural pathway (the route the brain uses to communicate with the body) that is formed when a new exercise is learned becomes a well-travelled route, and this exercise is sent to the long-term memory.  Once it is stored in long-term memory the exercise can be accessed quickly and repeated on demand.

            This knowledge can be useful when planning classes.  Since exercises can easily be accessed once they are learned, it makes sense to work backwards when planning classes and teaching new choreography.  If an educator choreographs the combinations that will be taught in class first, then he or she can work backwards and break the combinations into individual segments or exercises.  These exercises can then be introduced to the students during warm-up, in simpler form, or in smaller pieces when travelling across the floor.  A particular arm pattern that will be used in the final combination may be incorporated into a plié or tendu exercise, while a particular step like a spiral fall to the floor can be taught as a transitional piece of a developpé exercise. 

            Additionally, a step that may be done in a circular pattern in the final combination can be taught simply moving forward as a transitional phrase.  Once the motor pathway is established, it will be easier to manipulate it spatially, adding direction or using it to create new pathways.

           

This same principle can be applied when teaching choreography.  Rather than starting at the beginning of a dance, it can be useful to choreograph the piece first and then break it down into sections.  It will be easier if everyone first learns unison sections, then different groups learn their particular sections, and then the different parts can be woven together to create the final dance.  Once the phrases are learned, they can be manipulated to face different directions, can be slowed down or sped up, can be used in cannons, or can be layered on top of each other.

By working in this manner, dance educators can use information about how the body operates to make class time and rehearsal hours more productive and teach in a way that enables dancers to learn more quickly and experience less frustration when learning new steps and/or choreography.