By Scott Madson
Tendonitis, torn muscles, hours of practice: bring it on! It might sound like a football team, but these are just a few of the mental and physical rigors that dancers face each day when they hit the dance floor.
Ron Nuttall, director of the dance medicine facility, said dance requires a lot of stamina and strength along with a lot of dedication. It requires great cardiovascular training, good stability, and balance to perfect certain movements.
Vance Debes, a junior from Provo majoring in sociology, said the most challenging thing in dance is to make it look easy. Debes is a member of the theatre ballet.
'It''s extremely challenging because you have to do it right and you have to do it really well, but at the same time you have to make it look like it''s a cake walk,' Debes said.
Debes said he played sports when he was younger. He started taking a ballet class when he was 12-years-old to improve his skill, because he heard that professional football players take ballet in the off-season to get better at football.
'I think ballet is harder than any sport there is. Second to gymnastics it''s the most rigorous and involving physical challenge you can find,' Debes said.
Although dancing is not a contact sport like football or basketball, injuries happen on a regular basis.
Chelsey Donelson, a sophomore from Las Vegas, Nev. with an undeclared major, said performing with the Cougarettes and practicing dance is hard on the body. She said because dancers use nearly every muscle in the body, injuries are common in dance performance.
Donelson pulled her hip-flexor performing at a recent basketball game, but she keeps dancing despite the pain.
'I have to keep going and deal with it; it kills, I am constantly in pain,' Donelson said.
Debes said he has probably sprained his ankle close to twelve times, broken it once and even had reconstructive surgery on some ligaments. Gregg Crockett a senior from Orem, majoring in elementary education, injured his ankle last semester and had to take time off to recover before his group''s big presentation.
Nuttall treats many dancers in the dance training room for injuries. Some of the most common injuries are foot and ankle problems, tendonitis, back problems and overwhelmed muscles.
'Usually in dance we''re dealing with overuse or asking the muscle to repetitively do things that we don''t have the strength or endurance to do,' Nuttall said.
The goal for Nuttall, and his staff, is to help dancers'' bodies mend themselves. Nuttell helps the dancers condition to avoid possible injuries.
'We do a functional assessment to see where the weaknesses are in the dancers, and we try to develop or strengthen their weaknesses so they don''t have a potential injury down the road,' Nuttall said.
Dancers at BYU not only face physical challenges, but mental ones as well. They devote hours of practice and preparation each week along with their other responsibilities.
Jan Dijkwel, artistic director of the Theatre Ballet, said on average a typical dancer at BYU spends 15 hours a week in practice, and sometimes up to 30 to 40 hours during the weeks of big performances.
'The drive to perform and to do what you love to do is so strong it tones down a lot of pain that you have,' Dijkwel said.
Student dancers enjoy the benefits they receive through dance.
'Even though I keep hurting myself, and I am always in pain when I do it, it''s still really rewarding for me, because I am doing what I love to do,' Donelson said.