It is easier to prevent a disaster from occurring in the first place than it is to try to remedy a disaster. It is also less exciting and less buzzworthy; you never see headlines about how someone prevented skin cancer by staying out of the sun and wearing SPF, only about how someone escaped a near death experience with skin cancer and their miraculous recovery. Prevention is a way to avoid a setback from happening before it ever gets the chance to manifest. Does prevention work all the time no matter what? Of course not, but it also doesn’t hurt.
The key to prolonging your dance career is a preventative lifestyle. What is a preventative lifestyle? It is a concept of living a certain way that avoids injury, illness, and distress. It is the idea that you can begin a lifestyle today that will pay off in the future. You are never too old to begin a preventative lifestyle for yourself and for your dance career, and it’s empowering to take your future into your own hands. Here are five key points to living a preventative lifestyle today.
- Adding In Exercise
Exercise is such a wonderful way to prolong your dance career. The type of exercise you partake in is just as important as the workout itself. Try to aim for low impact, strength building workouts. Dance is aerobic and endurance oriented but doesn’t build much strength. This is why it’s important to skip the cardio and do strength building exercises as a dancer because the stronger you are, the less likely you are to become injured. Some examples of strength training workouts include pilates, thera bands, or my personal favorite workout for dancers: weightlifting.
How you do these workouts is important as well. It’s vital to engage in these exercises with proper body alignment and proper body mechanics. For example, never allow your knees to extend beyond your toes. Always move in a sequential way when weightlifting. Does that sound familiar? That’s because you’ve already learned those principles in your technique classes; workouts help improve your dance, and dance helps improve your workouts.
Weightlifting is an excellent workout for dancers, as the best way to build strength is to pick up some weights. Sure, Pilates is meh… “good” and yoga is ehhhhh…. “okay.” But weightlifting will give you the maximum benefits in the shortest amount of time, and we all know you’re busy with your rehearsal schedule. It gives you the most bang for your buck, as you will begin seeing results in two weeks to a month. I can promise you won’t get bulky, AND I can promise you’ll get that ab definition you’ve been dreaming of while running on the treadmill.
- Finding Balanced Nutrition
Being conscious of nutrition is important for dancers, and there are a few common misconceptions about nutrition for dancers. The most common pitfall of dancers is undereating, and this is unfortunately true mainly for women dancers as ideals are pushed onto us. Undereating is the quickest way to burn out and end your dance career at a young age. Women especially are prone to bone density disorders such as osteoporosis, which is largely a preventable disease, and can lead to easily broken bones which will end a dance career early. Proper nutrition is the best way to ensure a long, healthy, and happy dance career.
What you eat is important as well. We do not need to become obsessed with nutrition and drink kale smoothies every morning but having a basic understanding of nutrition will help you to make the right choices. Remember that timing of your macros is important too- an example of this would be eating carbs before a class, since carbs are key to sustained energy. Eating a high protein meal and drinking a protein shake after a dance class or workout will help maintain muscle.
Eating in a way that’s sustainable across your lifetime is key to a preventative lifestyle. Ask yourself, will cutting out certain food groups or following fad diets such as Whole 30 or Keto really benefit you in the long run? You will know the answer intuitively. And if the answer is no, reconsider your habits so you can be in it for the long game.
- Living an Elegant Lifestyle
There are different lifestyle factors that can either help prolong your dance career or shorten it. When making different choices ask yourself, “Is this going to help me level up?” If the answer is no, then reconsider. When in doubt, think like a grandma. Would a grandma stay up until two in the morning binging Netflix while scrolling on Pinterest? Probably not. This doesn’t mean you have to meditate for hours and purchase organic everything. This is about being mindful and balanced about your choices, as the choices you make today affect not only today, but down the road as well.
The early years for dancers are some of the most influential but can also be the most difficult. If you are in college, it can be easy to get swept away in party culture. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it can be easy to get sucked into the dance world so much that you don’t have a life outside of your dance program. Striking a balance that works for you will help you to avoid going to extremes of going out too much or isolating yourself. Remember that life is to be enjoyed and we are social creatures, but hard work and discipline is just as important.
- Serene Mental Health
The stereotype of the perfectionistic ballerina holds some truth to it. The ballet world, and the dance world in general, is so competitive that if you’re serious about being a performer, it seems natural to become a perfectionist. It’s very common for dancers to go all in and put everything on the line for dance training, or for a professional company. Some characteristics such as persistence, tenacity, and grit are virtues for a dancer to have. Growing a thick skin will keep you from giving up. However, there is another virtue for dancers that isn’t talked about as much: balance.
There are so many different dance studios, schools and companies out there. Every dancer can find the correct program for them, and the correct program will make them feel balanced. There is a company for every dancer; someone out there is looking for your own unique style for their repertoire. If you’d like, maybe you want to start your own company or solo project to showcase your style. There are so many options for dancers out there today. Therefore, it is important to know when a dance program or company isn’t a great fit and know when to step out and move on to one that supports you. When you say no to something that feels intuitively off, you open the door and say yes to something that is the right fit for you.
- Financial Well-Being
This last point seems like it doesn’t belong here, as it’s not usually thought of when thinking of ways to prolong your dance career. Personal finance can be a taboo subject, and people are pretty hush hush when discussing finances. However, maintaining healthy finances is key to a successful dance career. Planning ahead is important, and so is thinking about the results of your decisions.
Many dancers today are going to college for dance, and some professional companies prefer when dancers have a degree. However, dancers typically don’t make a large salary to begin with, so it’s crucial to avoid any kind of debt for a dance degree. High student debt could set you back, as you may need to find a higher paying job not related to dance just to get by. There are ways to plan for a successful dance career, and sometimes college isn’t the way, experience is. If attending college for dance, finding scholarships or attending a more affordable school will set you up for success.
Finding out the starting salary of a dance performer in the area you plan to live in is vital. If your dream is to travel on a cruise ship line, find out the median salary they make so you know what to anticipate, then plan and live your lifestyle accordingly. It might mean saying no to brunch every Saturday morning with the bottomless mojitos so you can pay rent while you’re first starting out (you probably have rehearsal Sundays, so you’ll want to avoid the mojitos anyway.) However, I promise it will be worth the necessary sacrifices, and it will get easier with time and experience. Say no today so you can say yes in the future.
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All in all, living a preventative lifestyle is the best way to prolong your dance career and is something you can start right now. We may be powerful as dancers, but we are not invincible. It’s so much easier to prevent a disaster from happening in the first place, then to attempt to remedy a disaster such as an injury. Living a preventative lifestyle is empowering because you are taking your actions and your future into your own hands. When you begin living an empowered life, opportunities tend to fall right on your lap.