Leap Through The Universe

Dancers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal in Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring

Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017

Black girls are soft.

Black girls are delicate.

Black girls are feminine.

Olga Spessivtseva as Giselle.

NYU Langone’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries (HCDI) performed a study on the biomechanics of jump landing, comparing athletes and dancers to learn more about the incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in both groups. From this study, HCDI has been able to identify training methods that dancers implement early on that can be useful to athletes who experience a higher rate of ACL injuries than dancers.

The lessen to be learned from this recent paper goes deeper than the biomechanics of landing and the epidemiology of ACL injuries. It brings to light the notion that how we move and an awareness of proper mechanics can have a huge impact long term. Healthy for me means being able to do the things in life I want to do – in the foreseeable future this is a full day of running around the hospital followed closely by a killer nighttime dance class. Keeping up this pace is going to mean paying more attention to things like posture and mechanics, even if it’s tempting to think that my 23 year old joints are invincible. I feel like the posture police these days, but it seems like a small price to pay for saving a trip to the OR further down the road. Trust me, those bone saws they use in ortho procedures are scary.