Revista de Medicina Desportiva (English) January 2019 | Page 30

Rev. Medicina Desportiva informa, 2019; 10(1):28-30.
Biomechanics and
Traumatology of Ballet
Flávia De Marco Sandrin 1 , Dr. Diogo Lino Moura 2 , Prof. Doutor Fernando Fonseca 3
1
Aluna da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Católica de Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil;
Estagiária no Serviço de Ortopedia do Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra (CHUC); 2 Médico
interno de Ortopedia do CHUC, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Coimbra (FMUC); 3 Diretor do
Serviço de Ortopedia do CHUC, FMUC. Coimbra
RESUMO / ABSTRACT
Ballet practice involves the repeated execution of complex and coordinated fast and delicate move-
ments, mostly involving the feet and upper limbs. Therefore, it makes sense that overuse injuries
by repeated stress affecting these anatomic segments are the most common ones. In this paper we
discussed the sport biomechanics and the characteristics of its most common traumatic injuries.
Even though limited, current epidemiological data on ballet traumatology are extremely important
in order to develop strategies of injury prevention, early diagnosis and optimized treatment of the
most prevalent injuries.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE / KEYWORDS
Ballet, sport, dance, injury, overuse, repeated movements
Introduction
Ballet is a kind of dance that
appeared on the XV century and its
evolution has conducted to differ-
ent modalities and specificities. 1 Its
origin is situated on the gestural
theatre known as Pantomima, that
was the art of narration with the
body. This way, it requires of its prac-
titioners complex and coordinated
movements. It gained world popu-
larity with the Repertoire Ballet, that
is a kind of ballet that tells a story,
namely the following: The Swan
Lake, the Nutcracker, Coppélia, Giselle,
Romeu and Julieta and Paquita.
Although it is a very practiced sport,
the scientific studies about trau-
matic injuries associated with the
practice of ballet is still very limited
when comparing with other sports. 1
and large movements of medial and
lateral rotation of the shoulders. It
also includes jumps and high impact
movements with load, that could be
the own body weight or even jumps
performed by a male dancer carry-
ing on his arms a female dancer. It
is a sport with specific vocabulary
with difficult techniques to handle.
It requires practice, discipline and
repeated high intense training of
movements in order to get them
better. 2-6 The professional practi-
tioners of ballet have, on average,
34 hours of weakly training and
these periods become more intense
during the preparation period for
competition. 7 The test period for
each more elaborated presentation
varies, annually, from 10 to 16 weeks
and total number of annual per-
formances varies between 122 and
195 for the professional dancers. 7
The actual professional modalities
of the ballet are variations of the
basal technique, the classic ballet. The
most widespread are: classic bal-
let, neoclassical, contemporary and
Hispanic dance. The majority of the
published studies are related to the
classic ballet, and this type is the
target of this text. Classic ballet is
a type of ballet with more complex
and minute techniques.
During the performances, regard-
less of the sneaker used (ballerinas
and mid-tip toe shoes for both
sexes), the dancers exhaustively
perform a movement called relevé, a
key technique where the dancers
change the position of the feet from
a completed leaning on the floor of
plantar face of the foot to a partial
leaning on the floor. The athletes
balance themselves and they
transfer the body weight to tarsome-
tatarsus, metatarsophalangeal and
interphalangeal joints or even to the
extremity of the distal phalanges of
the toes (Figure 2).
Traumatology on the ballet
On ballet, like in the other sports,
there are two basic types of muscu-
loskeletal injuries: acute traumatic
injuries and overuse injuries due to
repeated movements. 8,9 The trauma-
tic injuries on ballet have a multifac-
torial cause and they are associated
to risk factors classified as intrinsic
Biomechanichs of ballet
Independently the type that is per-
formed, ballet is a sport based on a
lot of fast and delicate movements,
mainly involving the feet and the
upper limbs. It has as a correct pos-
ture the orthostatism with retracted
scapulae, cervical spine on hyper-
extension and contracted abdomen.
It requires, mostly, movements of
plantar hyperflexion, lateral rotation
of the hip, called endehors (Figure 1)
28 january 2019 www.revdesportiva.pt
Figure 1 – Typical movements of the ballet
– cambreé performed by the famale dancer
or en dehors performed by the couple.
Figure 12 – Relevé or rising on tips, the
firts with load transfered by the meta-
tarsalphalangeal joints stil with plantar
support and the second with the major-
ity of the support on the the extremity
of the distal phalange of the halux with
small contribuition of the other toes.