How to keep your body dancing
As a dancer your body is your instrument of work. Your body is the most important tool you will ever have and you can’t get another one if you break it. You can get some spare parts but they will never function like the real thing. That’s why I live by the notion that my body is my temple. As a professional jazz dancer and choreographer I have had to put my body through quite a lot to get here. Back to back shows, rehearsals of several projects at the same time on top of back to back shows and teaching simultaneously.
Dance life is a busy one and that’s why it’s even more important to steal a couple of minutes to breathe. To stay sane it’s important to take some time to listen to your body before demanding it to do all of the things that you need to get done. A moment of self care will help you prevent getting injured and alert you of the risks before you take that fall. Here are five simple dance life hacks I do everyday to help my body prepare and to recover from the daily challenges.
- Hydration
We all are basically just houseplants with complicated emotions. Meaning, the less water you drink, the more complicated life gets. Did you know that we are about 70% made of water? Now imagine a balloon that is drained 70% percent or a houseplant you forgot to water for a couple of weeks. That is how you will look and feel if you don’t keep yourself hydrated. Especially for a dancer there is no better remedy for recuperating than staying hydrated. Especially after performances I always take electrolytes to repair the balance.
- Champagne cork
Our feet need to endure everything we want to do all day so how about we do something to support them? Warming up the feet will help the whole body to react better since the feet contain the proprioceptors that are part of the system regulating our balance. For dancing, balance is essential and that’s why I take time to massage the feet and with that wake up the proprioceptors as well. The feet contain 21 muscles that all need to work together for us to be able to dance.
- Sit bone massage
Your lateral rotators group is situated around the sit bone area of your dérriere. To rotate the legs out or in, you need these muscles to work for you. Sometimes they can be hard to find in stretching positions, especially if you’re a dancer and you’re quite flexible to start with. That’s why it’s important to massage these areas to make sure that these muscles also get a chance to recover after a long day of dance life. I recommend a rather soft ball to start with and then you can advance towards tennis balls, once you get the hang of it.
- Spine+soft ball=mobility
A plant without a stem would be just leaves floating in air, just like a body without a spine would be just limbs lingering in space. There, needed to bring some David Lynch into this too! Insufficient mobility of the spine that’s also often called our backbone truly is that. Stiffness of the spine can lead to compensatory movement patterns, which basically stresses out the spine and the surrounding structures as it puts pressure where it shouldn’t be. If you put too much stress on the spine there’s a bigger risk of injury. This is why stretching out the spine and breathing through every single vertebra is part of my dancers’ meditation after a day of dancing.
- Wool socks
Never leave the house without them. If your feet are cold you will waste so much energy warming them up rather than just being cozy and comfortable in your wool socks. The wool has healing powers in it and it’s warmth will help your feet recuperate and reset for a new day. Dance life hack pro tip: if your feet are sore, take a cold foot bath and then sleep in with the wool socks on.
I hope all of this brightens up those dance days and will bring a little relief in the rotation that a dance life requires!
Sincerely your Dance Life Hack, Wilma-Emilia of the #danceyourheartoutsessions
