Provide Your Dancers with Qualified Muscular Therapy
There’s hardly ever a question as to whether there’ll be a make-up artist, hair stylist, or wardrobe person, so why not provide a muscular therapist on set to take care of your dancer’s body? Realize that on the set of film or T.V., your dancers don’t have the luxury of going from class to stage, but usually get cold by sitting around for an hour, or doing take after take after take, then are expected to dance full out on hard floors, performing your choreography on film for posterity.
For over the past 40 years, I have been enhancing the quality of dance productions by reducing tension/fatigue, keeping muscles supple/strong, and thus preventing injury. I have also come in on emergency calls to treat injuries and kept productions rolling.
All major ballet companies have in their contracts a provision for a full-time muscular therapist. Broadway musicals with considerable amounts of dance provide muscular therapy. You as the choreographer can demand from your producers to have muscular therapy on set. It is not only practical but really a necessity. Your work will stand a better chance of resembling what you best imagined and your dancers will appreciate the care you have provided them.
I can be there all day, half day, or come in for a few hours during a dinner break and treat several of your dancers with 10-20 minute sessions. Muscular therapy on set is affordable, it just has to be first considered and then asked for. I’d be happy to help you present this idea to your producers, advising you with budgets and scheduling.
Prolong Your Manual Therapy Career
According to recent studies, the average length of a manual therapist’s career is 5 years. We all began massage schools where a large portion of the curriculum was receiving bodywork after we observed and performed the techniques. Why I believe so many therapists have a short career in this field because they never continued to regularly get worked on themselves. If you allow your hands, arms, and backs to tighten up from the strain of treating your clients, your work will become laborious, uncomfortable, painful, and no fun. When you allow your own body to become congested you lose your sensitivity in treating your clients.
From the beginning of my career I did many trades, but one year into my practice, I began training others to do the techniques that I was employing, teaching has allowed me to master these techniques. My classes are 2-3 hours long, consisting of observing the student’s posture, discussing their discomfort, and what/ we are about to do to remedy it. Working on the student and then having the student demonstrate on me. There has never been a period in my 45 years of bodywork where I haven’t been teaching my techniques and enjoying the process.
My quote, “We should age with wisdom and not rigidity,” comes from experiencing how beneficial quality bodywork is, however, I am often accused of acting like a five-year-old, probably from not aging in the typical “rigid,” manner.
There are many good techniques of bodywork and my four major influences (St. John. Neuromuscular therapy, Ida Rolf Structural Integration, visceral manipulation, and therapeutic stretching,) have been beneficial for the thousands of clients that I’ve treated, that I prefer to experience it myself when I am being treated. How long can a chef cook without tasting the food himself? By regularly experiencing my own treatment’s effects, I have also seen what the course of sessions should be, (i.e. 2-3 treatments weekly for 2-3 months in dealing with my hundreds of motor vehicle accidents including two of my own.)
I offer classes and challenge every MT or bodyworker reading this article to begin teaching what they are doing in their practice, to continually taste their own cooking, and reap the rewards of being in this important profession, one of the reasons we all got into this field in the first place. I bet a lot of manual therapists’ careers would not only be lengthened but they’d be greatly enhanced.
