Research: Injury in Professional Irish Dancers

This article is part 2 of a 2-part comprehensive survey of professional Irish dancers, and it focuses on the incidence of injury during a performance tour’s schedule. Three-quarters of the dancers surveyed reported a previous injury. The foot and ankle were the most common sites of injury, consistent with other dance injury literature. In contrast with the timing of injuries in a ballet or modern dance season, this study found the highest rate of injuries to be in the middle of the tour. This difference may be due to the different styles of performance between Irish dance and ballet/modern dance, since Irish dance choreography often does not drastically change from year to year (or at all within a tour/season, like it does for ballet companies).

In addition to asking dancers about the location and timing of their injuries, this survey gathered the dancers’ thoughts about possible causes of these injuries, how the dancers reacted to the injury (self-treatment, seek help, etc.), and important injury prevention measures practiced regularly by the dancers themselves. Nearly half of the survey respondents stated that an accident was a contributing factor to their injury, with over half of the dancers citing fatigue or overuse as a contributing factor. While many injured dancers did seek professional help for an injury, nearly half of them chose to continue dancing with their injury, which may lead to further pain and injury that can last long after a dancer’s career has ended. One encouraging note from this survey was the result that indicated that nearly everyone who completed the appropriate questions participated in either a group or individual warm-up or cool-down (or both) regularly. Continued education of both medical professionals and dancers may help shorten the gap between these two groups that may be contributing to the high number of dancers who do not seek treatment for injuries or elect to self-treat.

Cahalan R, O’Sullivan K. Injury in professional Irish dancers. J Dance Med Sci. 2013;17(4):150-8