Just got back from physical therapy. When I limped in, my therapist had this bewildered look. “Oh no, what happened?” she said.
“No, nothing to my injury,” I said (I have a partially torn meniscus in my right knee likely caused by unconsiously forcing turnout from the knees in ballet since I’ve developed both tendonitis and bursitis in both hips, making it hard to turn out from the proper place — the hip joints). “My thigh is just a little sore from a new thingy I was doing in my Latin lesson last night.”
“Show me,” she said, frowning.
When I illustrated how I was sitting butt half an inch from the floor, balancing on the ball of my left foot, right foot off floor and pointed, while Luis whipped me around repeatedly, she screamed, “What? That’s totally hard on your knees. Hello, you have a knee injury!”
After lecturing me about dancing at all until I healed, then about ever dancing more often then every other day even after the meniscus healed because of my ongoing tendonitis and perpetually tight IT band (still not completely sure what that is), she finally said I could do the spin if I promised to do it only on the left leg and even then be very very careful and not practice it for half an hour at a time.
But if I limit my dancing to every couple of days, only an hour or two a day and then don’t practice difficult things, obviously I’ll never improve. And I can’t wait for an injury to heal if it’s tendonitis, which never heals and can cause other problems. It really makes me feel for people like Kristin Sloan (from NYCBallet) and other professional dancers who have ongoing or recurring injuries because how are they supposed to limit their dancing time? How can anyone limit their dancing time!!
