I went to the dress rehearsal of The Nutcracker with my mum, and all the way through my mum had to keep pushing me back, I was on the edge of the seat. She said “you’re worse watching this than you are football”. I was exhausted afterwards, watching the dancers that are on my radar to support.
Game Changer
How physiotherapy is improving our performance
In October last year, Scottish Ballet appointed Martin Lanfear as full-time physiotherapist. He is both teacher and counsellor to our dancers. Helping them get the most out of their bodies and supporting them through the harder times, such as injuries.
Unlike the romantic era of Degas, when dancers were decorative actresses performing mime, our dancers are akin to athletes.
Copywriter Sarah Potter spoke to Martin about his role, and what makes being a physiotherapist at the ballet different from a sports environment. She also caught up with our dancers to find out what working with Martin is like for them.
Martin Lanfear, Scottish Ballet's Physiotherapist
Like most physiotherapists, Martin’s experience previous to Scottish Ballet was in sport. ‘We have to be disciplined as clinicians coming in to the dance environment, to take our sports-hats off. In sport, we have an outcome; we win or we lose, and that’s not the case in dance’.
Martin oversees Scottish Ballet’s Wellness Team, bringing physiotherapy and the work of our massage therapist and Gyrotonic instructors in line with the aims of the Artistic Team.
Martin meets the dancers every day. One hour before class he has a walk-in clinic, no appointment necessary, no matter where we are in the world. Martin says, ‘I am looking after the dancers as people and they should always feel comfortable to come to me. Our Principal dancers are fantastic role models for the younger dancers. They are where they are because of the way they act outside the studio, not just the way they dance. The second they have a problem, they report it and we work on it.’ Apparently, they’ve been doing ice baths at home long before Martin came to the post.
Scottish Ballet Dancer Constance Devernay Rehearse Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling
I asked Martin, what are the factors that separate our dancers from the public and other athletes? Martin said, ‘dancers are hyper-mobile, they have larger than normal ranges of movement. The amount of work their body is put through on a weekly basis is huge, even compared to rugby players. Dancers must think about the way they jump and move across the stage, as well as how high and how far. The repetition of extreme movements, day-in, day-out, is incredible. In football, the ball could go anywhere and you react. In ballet, you are lifting the same dancer, over the same shoulder every single day’.
Martin has already set up two physio programmes; an ankle strengthening group for the women and a shoulder strengthening group for the men. Pointe work and lifts being the hard-wearing movements that cause common injuries. ‘What the male dancers are doing is seriously impressive, it’s beyond the realms of what a normal human would ever do.’ Martin tells me he is trialling new programmes specifically for certain roles in each ballet. If James in Highland Fling performs a 10-minute solo followed by lifts, the dancer performing this role will train by doing 10 minutes of high-intensity aerobic activity followed by a set of weight lifting. These programmes will strengthen dancers and prepare them for their roles.
Martin says ‘you are always going to have injuries in this profession, but in my ideal world, we are only having injuries that we can’t avoid. Nobody wants injured dancers. My job is to keep all the dancers healthy. I want to give the Artistic Team all the colours of the pallet to work with all the time.
Our dancers get with the programme…
Every Tuesday Martin holds a 30min ankle strengthening group for any of our Company dancers who would like to sign up. The circuit training style session consists of lower limb and ankle exercises selected by Martin. In this session they are repeating the exercises for 30 seconds on each leg before moving on to the next exercise.
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