Hitting the proverbial brick wall

Having neglected my work slightly, I knew that a Skype call with Paula would be a good way to get me back on track! Myself and Maddy, had a great discussion the other night with Paula about our possible lines of inquiry. It really helped to be reassured that we were heading in the right direction and also allowed us to hone in our ideas to create a more concise plan of action with regards to module 2.
I explained my ideas to Paula surrounding injury prevention and hyper-mobility in dancers. I said that I had always had an interest in injury and anatomy so that route seemed only too natural for me to explore in more detail. She then told me that if anything I was being too specific and needed to open up the topic and make it more explorative and developmental, as opposed to black and white research. This point I found particularly interesting and helpful, so I talked about the idea of looking into the individuality of each and every dancer's body and how different bodies are going to be effected by certain elements of training. This topic seemed more appropriate for my inquiry and Paula said that looking into individuality was very interesting. From here I just wrote down some possible bullet points of things I would like to explore or things to research further and include in my inquiry. These were:

• Injuries in young training dancers

• Hyper-mobility in dancers and it's effects

• EDS syndrome and similar conditions in dancers and it's effects

• Individuality in dancer's bodies

• How to prevent injury through strengthening and conditioning 

• Screen processes at vocational school for young dancers

• Can young dancer's bodies be affected by the way in which they train? (positive and negative)

• How does dancing from a young age make your muscularity and body develop differently from non-dancers?

• Should there be a more rigorous screening process to identify young dancers weaknesses and help prevent injuries?

• Should there be more dance specialist physiotherapists at vocational schools?

Also during our discussion, Paula asked me why I had an interest in injury prevention and in particular hyper-mobility. I told her than at age 14, I had quite a serious hip injury which went un-diagnosed for almost a year and resulted in me having to have hip surgery. When I eventually had it treated by a consultant, he said it was down to me having hyper-mobile joints and as I was young and doing abnormal things with my body daily in ballet class,  I actually hadn't developed the strength to control my movements. Had this been identified earlier on, I could have had exercises to build the right muscles and a worked more carefully in class and surgery would never have been necessary. This is the reason I feel so passionate about this topic as I know that with more research and attention, many other young dancers could prevent such injuries from occurring.

The Next step

Now I'm back into work mode I'm going to create a plan of action for the next few weeks. Some things I want to achieve are:

1. Research my area and come up with some good extracts of literature relevant to my topic
2. Look into ethical issues surrounding injury prevention in particular ethical issues around young injured dancers
3. Converse with my old physiotherapist and some other useful contacts to get ideas and knowledge of the area from them
4. Discuss my ideas with other dancers both on the course and outside of BAPP

Hopefully, I will be able to get the ball rolling now with regards to my studies and I'm very excited to see what new information and research I can find on this area.