Off Time

“Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.” –anonymous

                Every dancers fear is being told they can’t dance, they need to rest, sit out, or take a break. If you’re not practicing and others are they are making progress and moving forward, improving; while you are regressing or moving back. Dance isn’t a sport where you can just pick back up right where you left off with a year of not stretching. You will not remember all the small details of a dance over a year if you don’t practice or perform it, and most dancers don’t go to watch their group or class practice because the fact that they can’t be doing what they love with those people makes it too painful to watch.

                A way to make getting back into dance more quickly after you have some time off is going to rehearsals and sitting in and watching. Just being there isn’t going to do enough though, you must be attentive and mentally participate. In a ballet class do the combinations in your head. Rehearse all of your pieces in your head as well. It fires the same memory neurons when you do the dance in your head and when you actually do the dance full out. By working the same neurons you aren’t losing anything memory wise, causing you to not regress; and occasionally you can even make progress if you try hard enough. You can learn new things this way. It also exercises you mentally which can help with picking up choreography more quickly in the future.

Another helpful thing would be to stretch, do what you can to maintain flexibility; you lose it faster than you gain it. Make sure you do everything the doctor or physical therapist says to lead you to a faster recovery but don’t push your body over its limits. You have to make sure you don’t injure yourself more than you were by trying to get back into things too quickly. Also bring a notebook in class and write down the new steps and corrections, tiny details and anything that seems important enough to write down. This way you won’t forget the new things because you can practice them full out. Lastly you must keep a positive outlook. Believing that taking time off is the best thing for you at the moment and that you will be back on stage in no time will help as well. In all reality even injured dancers don’t have off time.