Module 2 - 4a

After having read through numerous blog posts, reading and re-reading the handbooks and pondering over the direction I wish to take my own studies.. I have finally constructed my own questions that are relevant to my personal interests and practice. Physiotherapy and more specifically, the impact and correlation it has in a professional ballet company, has always been a huge interest of mine and one that I hope to delve much further into during my BAPP course. As someone who has been lucky enough to avoid any major injuries during my career it has always been intriguing for me observe through the looking glass as friends and co workers deal with injuries, prevention and rehabilitation.





1. Does treatment from a physiotherapist shorten recovery time?

Now I understand that reading this you may think "well yes, obviously" but it is something that I would like to research much more in depth to get a proper understanding of. For example, perhaps your physio thinks your ankle is sprained and treats it accordingly but in fact you could have ligament damage or a fracture, this in turn could prolong your recovery or possibly worsen your injury all together. Equally, what if you just ignored that niggle in your foot, or that ache in your lower back? A trained physiotherapist would spot the problem immediately and treat it accordingly. With further research I could look into different types of treatment performed by a physiotherapist for example: yoga rehabilitation, acupuncture procedures or cupping and compare the differing benefits.

2.  Does the ratio of physiotherapists to dancers in a professional ballet company have an impact on the severity and amount of injuries that occur?


For this question I would need to conduct a lot of interviews between different companies for comparison. When doing comparisons I would use my own company which has a small room and 1 physiotherapist to a company like Birmingham Royal Ballet which has at least 3 on sight physiotherapist and a huge on site physio center specifically for recovering dancers. I think the comparisons would be very interesting to study and could provide some extremely useful statistics for not only my personal BAPP learning but for companies all around the world. It could also raise other questions like "Should physiotherapists be mandatory in a ballet company?" or "Should dancers be given basic training of physiotherapy to help prevent and manage injuries"?

3. Does the amount of money budgeted in a ballet company for physiotherapy have an impact on recovery time and treatment accuracy?

This question I think would be a difficult one to address as I'm sure ballet companies wouldn't disclose financial records to me, but understanding an approximate percentage of a ballet companies budget that is designated to its physiotherapy department could answer my previous question. Also, if a company spends a vast amount of its budget on physiotherapy equipment, could that improve the recovery rate of its dancers? Could that equipment help maintain healthy dancers and help them avoid injuries? So many questions, but ones that I am excited to delve a little deeper into.



Is anyone else interested in physiotherapy? I have been reading a lot of blog posts about dancers minds and teaching but haven't stumbled on anyone addressing physiotherapy yet. I hope that we can get a good conversation going in the comments as would love to hear others thoughts on this topic.