Pre-Professional Dancer Preseason Screening Part 1: Stations 1-7

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Preseason screening serves several purposes. These include ascertaining past medical, dance, and exercise history, identifying red flags, measuring known risk factors for injury in dancers, referral for more specific evaluation, educating the dancers, and introducing the dance cohort to you as a knowledgeable dance medicine practitioner. This course will introduce important tests to determine dancer readiness for their workloads, covering aerobic fitness, posture and turnout, hypermobility, flexibility, strength, and balance. In Part 2, we will present a ballet-based dance technique screen and review how to present your screening findings in an active workshop format.

Meet your instructor

Shaw Bronner

Shaw Bronner’s first career was as a dancer, performing nationally and internationally with several modern dance companies. Dr. Bronner earned her PhD at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers University) in rehabilitation and movement sciences, earned an EdM in biobehavioral studies at Columbia…

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Chapters & learning objectives

1. Introduction to Screening

This course will focus on screening the adolescent pre-professional dancers. This screen is appropriate for ages 13 – 19 years. Adolescents will be at a different technical level than professionals, hence the need for a different screen. When we consider adolescents, recent research suggests several areas of concern. These include early specialization, excessive volume of training, lack of aerobic conditioning, and disproportionate focus on competition tricks to the detriment of sound biomechanical alignment.

2. Set-Up, Training, Execution, and Interpretation of Stations One and Two

When screening a group of 10-40 individuals, it is important to be well prepared to facilitate flow. The space can be set up into stations, each with the necessary equipment. We recommend a trained health professional supervises each station. Alternatively, the health care professional can conduct the full screen on each dancer individually. Make sure your personnel are trained and prepared to facilitate flow of the dancers through the seven stations.

3. Set-Up, Training, Execution, and Interpretation of Stations Three and Four

This chapter will address testing for joint hypermobility, posture and turnout. Norms for the dance population will be included in order to interpret your results.

4. Set-Up, Training, Execution, and Interpretation of Stations Five, Six, Seven, and Summary

This chapter will address testing for lower extremity flexibility, abdominal and lower extremity strength, and balance. Norms for the dance population will be included in order to interpret your results.

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