Sore arches may be one of the peskiest pain spots dancers deal with. This small area on the bottom of your feet may seem minor, but it actually does a lot of work: Your arches are what allow your feet to support the weight of your entire body. While any sharp, unbearable pain should always […]

You’re standing backstage, and your mind won’t stop racing. What if, after weeks of rehearsal, you suddenly forget the choreography? What if that terrible critic gives you yet another embarrassing review? Did you remember to sew your pointe shoes correctly? Why won’t your partner stop cracking his darn hip joint? Why can’t you stop freaking […]

Great dance educators with smart, scientific teaching practices are invaluable to the dance field. How else could we create healthy, beautiful dancers? The International Association of Dance Medicine and Science is looking to honor someone who’s made a substantial impact through teaching with its annual Dance Educators Award—and the committee is asking for nominations. The […]

In the studio, dancers obsess over proper form to mitigate the risk of injury. In the rest of our lives, however, we rarely examine our alignment in the same way. But our downtime habits can directly impact our bodies and, if left unchecked, could cause problems over time. A few simple adjustments might save you […]

Since George Balanchine first asked her to care for his dancers in the 1980s, Marika Molnar has helped heal icons as varied as Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Natalia Makarova, Judith Jamison, Twyla Tharp, Chita Rivera and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Some patients call her their guardian angel. “Marika has always answered all my (sometimes ridiculous) questions with […]

Every dancer has learned—probably the hard way—that healthy feet are the foundation of a productive and happy day in the studio. As dancers, our most important asset has to carry the weight (literally) of everything we do. So it’s not surprising that most professional dancers have foot care down to an art. Three dancers shared […]

Have you ever felt like your relationship to dance is something of an addiction? Not to worry, that’s completely normal—it’s simply the way our brains are wired. This week, The Washington Post published an intriguing feature that looks at the science of what actually goes on upstairs when we’re watching a live performance. The insight […]

We always figured that stretching made us more flexible by loosening up our muscles and joints. Some of us, ahem, might have even tried to fall asleep in our middle splits to get our stubbornly stiff inner thighs to let go. But it turns out that might not actually be how stretching works. A new […]