How to Come Back After an Injury

I have been living between New York City and Philadelphia for nearly 2 months at this point. And while I am still working hard on finding stable teaching and choreographic work, it has allowed me plenty of time to ease myself back into shape with my favorite NYC ballet teacher, Nancy Bielski, as well as trying some new instructors and dance styles (I just tried Gaga at the Mark Morris Dance Center) to expand my scope of the scene up here. While I have been getting a great many questions about what I'm auditioning for or where I am performing, I've found it nearly impossible to explain my situation. In fact, I don't really know what my situation is and where the performing part of my career is leading me. For a long time, I tried to force myself back into shape after suffering such a severe injury in Oakland nearly 2 years ago. At times, I went about this in the appropriate ways. But at other times, even with 13 years of dancing professionally behind me, I fell down a path that was not most conducive to repair. I found it difficult to appropriately strengthen a body damaged by years of wear and tear and a mind weakened by too many daunting situations in too short a period of time.

The inspiration for this post? The other day I found that one of my former students had posted three photos of herself on her Facebook account. Initially, I was cheerful to see this talented student posting some photos. But I quickly realized that these images, which included big jumps and extreme extensions, had been taken only one day after returning from nearly 6 months off due to injury. Granted, this student is a child, I was mortified to think that she had spent so much time off in order to return healthy to dance and out of pain. Whether she was motivated to post these photos online out of excitement or ego, I'm actually glad that this happened. Not only did this allow me to intervene to keep this dancer on the right path. It reminded me that I (ripe into my 30's) have committed such acts of excitement, even if I didn't post images of it online.

There is no guidebook for returning from an injury. Every injury is different and every person's body will react differently to therapy, conditioning, and exercises. But what I have learned is that there is truly an appropriate way to come back from a long-term injury. After your doctor has given you the OK to return to class, you must resist the urge to jump into class full force. Getting the green light to return to dance doesn't mean that the work of recovery is over. It means that you are in a safe place to start producing the building blocks of your technique.

My "barre" at the gym

After getting approval to start taking class again last May (after nearly a year off from taking full class), I started things off correctly. I feel that there is often a lot of pressure to take another's class the first few times that you start executing your plies and tendus. Not everybody is like me, but I always feel pressure to follow the instructors combinations to the T. Now, as a professional, I may alter a few things in class, I still tend to do things that I shouldn't be doing if I am taking somebody's class. For this reason, my first week back to class I prefer to find a space either in a studio, gym, or at home where I can start with some simple plies, tendus, and jetes. I focus this first week on remembering what it feels like to pull my inner thighs together, to support my spine with my core muscles, and beyond. By the end of this first week, I may progress to rond de jambes. But I am reluctant to push too fast, too soon because I want to remain healthy.

Posing for Instagram, but only working up to tendus this day

Once my first week has passed, I take a day or two off and continue to build on the structure of class. I add rond de jambe, rond de jambe en l'air, fondu, adagio, frappe, and grand battement exercises at a rate of one new exercise per day. If I feel that I need more strength, I may repeat a combination twice or refrain from moving forward to a new exercise until I feel ready. I try to resist the urge to add two combinations at a time. Again, this is all about building blocks. I focus on executing exercises properly with the correct muscle groups versus forcing my way through combinations without noting what muscle groups are initiating action. I know a great many dancers that move too fast in their progression towards being in shape, and what happens is they execute exercises using the incorrect muscles. Not that they don't know which muscles they should be using, but they haven't built enough strength in the right ones to avoid gripping superficial muscles. This often causes new pain or injury. At this point, feel free to enter somebody's classroom, but be sure to tell them that you are recovering from an injury. For me, I still like to work up to this point by myself, away from the pressure of any watching eyes. Keep in mind that it is completely appropriate to start adagio with your working leg at 45 degrees or to only perform fondu or frappe on flat for some time. Give yourself a pass at judgement and offer yourself some empathy towards health.

At this point, now that I can complete barre to a degree, I feel comfortable to finally enter a classroom. Again, after speaking with the teacher before class starts, I feel more at liberty to do things on my terms. For the next few weeks, I work my way towards jumps. Sometimes, I add one combination a day. Sometimes, I choose to only execute combinations like adagio once to allow my body to acclimate. The biggest part of this return game is to make sure that I am pushing myself along my own schedule without holding back everywhere because of fear or pushing too quickly out of impatience or excitement.

I am mostly reluctant to take any dance classes outside of the genre of ballet during my recovery period due to the structure provided by ballet class. Most classes in contemporary, jazz, musical theatre, hip hop, and beyond begin with a warm-up in center, followed by technique exercises and choreography. The structure of a ballet class gives you something to hold on to for starters (barre), a period of time between each exercise to analyze how your body is responding to information, and an easy opportunity to bow out when you have reached your maximum. Dance classes in other genres, at the beginning of a recovery period, can make it difficult to gauge when and where to stop and can potentially prolong recovery or result in new injury.

After I have progressed past center, I spend the most attention coddling my jumps. Throughout this past recovery period, I began to get in shape and then fell off the wagon due to my Core-ography project, traveling for work, and a lack of classes that inspired me. Now that I am in New York and back on track, it has taken me nearly one and a half months to finally finish class. Strength for jumps is the first thing to disappear after a long period off. And since there are so many different things involved in launching yourself into the air and because it is the end of class when your muscles are tired, jumps are the last thing to build back up. The last thing you want to do is jump straight into saut de chats or other large jumps, feel great on the way up, and realize that you don't have the strength to slow down the force of gravity in your landing. TAKE YOUR TIME. Perhaps, start doing a few combinations holding onto the barre. Then, progressively move forward at your own pace. This time around, I spent nearly two weeks only working through petite allegro.

One of the biggest issues in recovery is excitement to get back in class. Whether you missed moving your body, you are responding to end of class adrenaline, or you just can't let go of that ego, don't wait for the instructor to stop you or, worse, your body. Be reasonable and keep your long-term goals in sight. Dancing feels amazing for the mind, body, soul, and ego. But nothing creates more emotional injuries than a continuous stream of physical ones. As I continue to work myself back into what I consider performance shape, when people ask me what I'm auditioning for or where I'm performing I tell them this. I am getting back in shape for me and so that I can fully show my choreography when creating and instruction when teaching, since this is what I'm focusing on. If I feel healthy enough to perform again, then so be it. But this time, I'm getting in shape for me. Not for my ego. Not for the applause of live audiences or for likes on social media. Now that I finally have access to the tools to potentially perform again, I'm pacing myself and doing things on my body's terms and in my own time.

Working on some choreography at the gym

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Falling ill as a Dancer - Taking Care of Yourself

I missed class Friday morning and I'm stressed out about it. After my gig with Company C Contemporary Ballet, I spent a few days enjoying the great city of San Francisco. Upon my return home, I let my body have a bit of a rest. After the physical trauma of replacing a dancer at the last second in 2 ballets, my body really needed it. It was pretty wrecked, especially my shoulder, from the lack of build up, so I felt I deserved an easy week. I took two ballet classes, taught a few more (ballet and contemporary), took a yoga class, and went to the gym maybe 3 times.  Yes, that was an easy week for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't have foreseen that by the end of my easy week I'd come down with that bad cold virus that has been going around.

I'm pretty good at gauging how much time I need to prepare for a series of performances. I figured it would take about two weeks to gear up for my next job dancing Romeo in Fort Wayne Ballet's production of Romeo and Juliet. Today, I missed class for the second time in one week. I just felt too horrible to get out of bed. And while I know that my body desperately needed the rest, I still felt guilty and nervous that I won't feel perfectly prepared when I leave in a little over a week.

Sometimes, you just need a few extra hours of rest

The idea of being sick as a freelancer is quite frightening. Beyond having limited funds and, possibly, limited insurance, most independent dance artists don't have the benefit of taking a paid sick day. Between gigs, it may be easier to take time off and get necessary rest. But if performing other work, like the teaching job I hold at Koresh Dance Company's school, freelancers need to be present to collect that income. If one doesn't teach, they don't get paid. If a dancer is in preparation mode and gearing up for a gig, it can be stressful to miss out on the routine that one relies on to prep themselves physically and mentally for the work that is to come. Getting sick while working a gig can be all the worse.

When I was guesting with Rochester City Ballet for their 2012 performances of The Nutcracker, I came down with a horrible case of bronchitis. I resisted going to the doctor for awhile, but, beyond my energy levels being depleted, I could barely breathe my way through rehearsals. I have had pretty severe asthma since I was a little kid. It is much better as an adult, but when I get sick my condition can go downhill fast. I was huffing and puffing through rehearsal, coughing, and barely making it through my short rehearsal days. My mindset was that this company had never seen me dance before and I needed to prove to them that they hired who I said I was. And I was who I said I was, just an ill version of him. I finally went to an urgent care center, where I was diagnosed with bronchitis. I was given a breathing treatment on-site, an extended oral steroid treatment, and some opiate cough syrup to let me sleep. While I felt like death, often struggling to breathe, and felt lightheaded from the steroid medication, I still showed up for rehearsal every day and pretended like everything was fine. In fact, I never even considered asking to take a day off to rest.

Me in the front on the right - I was sick during this rehearsal (Photo: Bill Hebert)

One common issue with freelancing gigs is that the hired dancer is only brought in for a brief period of time. Arts organizations are often cash strapped, so they don't bring in a dancer with a cushion of extra time to ease into rehearsals or in the event of an unforeseen issue/delay (illness, injury, weather, etc.). For this reason, dancers are often only given the exact amount of time that it would take to prepare themselves to learn the choreography and put the product onstage. If I had taken a day off, the company may have felt that they were wasting their financial resources or were losing valuable preparation for their performances. I am sure that if I asked to take a day off, it would have been met with an uncomfortable yes. But it is ingrained in our culture to fight any struggles within our body and push forth for the sake of our art.

While this issue is widespread in the freelance dance world, it is just about as common in the unionized dance world; where companies must provide sick and personal days to their employees. When I danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet, it was almost frowned upon to take a day off if you weren't feeling well. Although the organization did have more money, the dance art's financial mindset remains the same. With more performance programs offered throughout the year and, at times, multiple casts performing, there is still limited rehearsal time for productions. This time-crunch puts a lot of pressure on dancers, who feel that they already have a time-crunch to fit as many roles into their short career as possible. If a dancer feels too ill to come in for a day or two, they often miss strategic rehearsals where choreography is taught. If the artistic staff doesn't feel they have enough time to catch that dancer up, there is great possibility that they may take them out of a hard-earned role. That role could very well be the one that pushes their career forward. For this reason, I have seen dancers, who may be extremely ill and highly contagious, show up to rehearse for a full 6-hour day. And even worse, people often applaud their effort, from a healthy distance, of course.

The best example of this is shown in Stephen Manes book, Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear, which catalogs a year in the life of PNB during my third season with the company. While preparing for our company premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot's Romeo et Juliette,  a flu epidemic struck the company. Due to scheduling and finances, the company only had about 2 1/2 weeks to learn the production, adapt to a foreign style of dance, and fine-tune the choreography. We barely got this production onstage and the company barely survived this illness. I don't remember exact numbers, but at any point during this 3-week period, at least 1/4 of the dancers had spiked fevers well over 102 degrees, lost their voices, had coughing fits, and more. But people still showed up. And if they tried to stay home for a day, like me, they were given a call by the artistic staff begging them to come to the studio to finish learning the ballet. While they didn't force anybody to come in, the pressure was immense. Beyond slowing down each dancer's ability to get healthy, this also risked spreading the highly contagious virus. And boy did it spread!

Dance training is already mildly to aggressively masochistic. But beyond the physicality of the profession, this shows part of the emotional masochism that exists in the dance world. Looking back to my post about emotional training in ballet, it is evident that dancers didn't just happen to turn out and act in this manner. It is taught. We are supposed to sacrifice all for our art. Stories aren't told about dancers who were wildly ill and took a few days to themselves and got better, which allowed them to dance better the next week and prove themselves ready to promote. How common is the story of the dancer that was so sick during a performance that they had to put trash cans in every wing for them to puke into during their exits from the stage? I have heard this same story from so many different dancers, I can't even count on both hands how many times I've been told it. And while the thought of this is gross and repulsive, these dancers tell this story with a sense of pride.

But this experience should not be lauded. I have said this time and time again and I am going to repeat it one more time. We are humans first and dancers second. Our health stays with us beyond our time as dancers. Beyond illness, there is injury. And while this isn't an injury post, it works all the same. The best way I can explain this is through a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks ago. As dancers, we are supposed to be a blank canvas which choreographers can paint a picture of dance on. A painter will never hear the canvas tell them that their brush strokes are too hard. A choreographer expects the same of a dancer. But if a painter pokes a hole through a canvas, they can still hang it on a wall and the canvas feels no pain. Where we differ as dancers is, if the process of our art "pokes a hole" in our bodies or health, we still have to live our lives and experience our non-dancing hours in pain and poor health. It is very difficult to make a reasonable decision about fighting through illness or pain. How does one determine whether it is workable or pushing into a danger zone? It is individual.

As dancers, we can't open up our computer and perform satellite work from home. We need to be present to retain information, study intricate combinations, and gain stamina. The ironic part of the whole situation is that the work of a dancer is one of the most hands-on and communal work experiences available. We touch each other, hold hands, and talk very closely throughout the entire rehearsal process. It would seem obvious that employers should want to keep sick dancers away from healthy dancers to prevent the spread of illness. But in the end, the dancer makes the decision to show up to work ill, and employers rarely send dancers home for being sick. Beyond this, when a dancer is not fully present in rehearsal or lacking energy, they are more likely to injure themselves or their partners. There are many aspects of being ill that would reasonably point to the concept of letting dancers rest at home until they are feeling somewhat better. Employers should want to give an ill employee a chance to get healthy before returning to the studio.

As I evaluate and analyze this issue in dance, I can't say that I necessarily follow my own advice. In the above story about my time with Rochester City Ballet, I obviously worked through a dangerous illness, especially as an asthmatic. As a freelance artist and a performer, I didn't feel that I had a choice in the matter. Over the last week, I was able to take time to let myself rest because of the intermittent period between gigs. But even without the requirement of showing up to work each day, I felt guilty and anxious. This is greatly due to our emotional training. While I did what any sane person would do and increased my chances of getting healthy faster, I couldn't allow myself to rest emotionally. This is one of the great challenges of a dancer.

I was perusing my Facebook this morning and there was a status update that sprung to my attention. The post was about Jenifer Ringer, who recently retired from New York City Ballet as a Principal for many years with the company. She talked about seeing a puddle of snowy slush on the street in New York and contemplated jumping over this puddle that was blocking her path. But then she stopped herself to consider what could happen if she performed such a feat. What if she slipped and fell and hurt herself? But then, instantly, she realized that she was retired and could do whatever she wanted, even if it could potentially cause injury. She stated, "Finally, my body was my own." And how true that statement is. As dancers, we have more control of our own bodies than any other beings on Earth. But as dancers, our career responsibilities and emotional upbringings take away our freedom to do what we wish, or need, to do with our bodies.