Mason researchers study physical and mental demands on collegiate dancers

Colleen Rich — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 17:39:32 +0000

Mason researchers study physical and mental demands on collegiate dancers Colleen Rich Wed, 01/03/2024 - 12:39

Researchers at George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) and College of Visual and Performing Arts are studying the intricate world of collegiate dance as they try to develop a better understanding of the physical and mental demands placed on dance majors.

Jatin Ambegaonkar and team conducting their annual assessments with first-year dance majors in 2018. These assessments are part of the ongoing work SHARe consortium via Mason's SMART Laboratory. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

The research team is led by Jatin Ambegaonkar, a professor in the Athletic Training Education Program within Mason’s School of Kinesiology, Mason doctoral candidate Kelley Wiese, and Jena Hansen-Honeycutt, the athletic trainer for the School of Dance.

This study, funded by a grant from the Virginia Athletic Trainers’ Association, will allow the researchers to call attention to the rigorous nature of this art form and how it can impact the well-being of performers. In so doing, they hope to increase awareness of the health needs of collegiate dancers.

The study will include an assessment of the physical activity demands and sleep quality among 30 to 40 Mason dance majors, as measured by data collected from wearable biosensors, and an analysis of self-reported perceptions involving physical and mental workload, fatigue, and sleep within the same demographic. The researchers believe that an assessment of the sleep habits and workload endured by these performers will elucidate the complexities of the physical and mental strains experienced by collegiate dancers and provide crucial information to clinicians, educators, dance programs, and the dancers themselves.

The study will include an assessment of the physical activity demands and sleep quality among 30 to 40 Mason dance majors, as measured by data collected from wearable biosensors. Photo by Jena Hansen-Honeycutt/School of Dance

While dance offers physical and psychosocial benefits to an estimated 11 million participants in the United States, an alarming 85% of dancers suffer injuries annually, underscoring the vital need for specialized care.

Weise, who is pursuing a PhD in Education with a kinesiology concentration, is dancer and performer herself, which led to her interest in performing arts medicine. “My personal passion for performing arts aligned with the desire to provide quality care for performers,” she said. She added that this understanding, cultivated through her personal experiences on stage, provides her with insights into the physical and psychological demands of artists during training, rehearsals, and recovery.

“Our mission is injury prevention and performance enhancement, extending dancers’ careers,” said Ambegaonkar, who is also associate dean for research in CEHD’s Office of Research Development. “Our findings will enable stakeholders to tailor training, recovery, and participation considerations to accommodate the fluctuating demands experienced throughout the year.”

Ambegaonkar anticipates the study also will illustrate the importance of on-site access to qualified health care professionals who are dedicated to monitoring and supporting the unique needs of this specialized group of aesthetic athletes.

For Ambegaonkar, his lead role in the current study is representative of the dedication and commitment he has exhibited throughout his career in seeking to expand the body of scientific knowledge pertaining to dancers’ risk of injury—a mission he embarked on when he first started working at Mason in 2006. His ethos of “Health for Dancers, Dance for Health,” gave rise to a pioneering consortium established in 2018, Supporting Healthy Arts Research (SHARe), aimed at holistically addressing dancers’ health needs.

To this end, he believes that this area of research holds the promise to unlock crucial insights that could significantly impact the training, recovery, and overall care provided to collegiate dancers and which could lead to enhanced support and understanding within the performing arts.

Learn more about the SMART Lab

Learn more about Mason's School of Dance

Topics

Research

College of Education and Human Development

College of Visual and Performing Arts School of Dance

Sports Medicine Assessment Research and Testing (SMART) Laboratory

Students

New virtual tool makes distanced performing arts classes possible

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 09:00:35 +0000

New virtual tool makes distanced performing arts classes possible Colleen Rich Wed, 09/30/2020 - 05:00

Heritage Professor of Dance Christopher d'Amboise creates system that allows for life-size, full-body teaching from anywhere in the world.

While teaching at George Mason University, Heritage Professor of Dance Christopher d'Amboise saw the need for a video conferencing system that would allow for life-size, full-body interaction—projecting dancers from a remote location directly on to the wall of the Mason studio and allowing him to successfully teach dance to students anywhere in the world.

So he created one. The result is a virtual teaching system called the Moving Story Window Wall^™. When the pandemic hit, the technology enabled Mason’s School of Dance to offer hybrid dance classes while keeping dancers and faculty safe.

During the first week of school, small groups of dancers in separate studios in the de Laski Performing Arts Building moved within their marked personal spaces, and the entire class, including those students taking the class remotely, was brought together using Window Wall’s large-scale video display.

“The system is particularly helpful in today’s world,” said d’Amboise, “because it allows the professors to teach live and online at the same time. It also gives the students who are studying remotely a sense of community with their on-campus classmates.”

Karen Reedy, director of the School of Dance, agrees.

“The technology and Window Wall in our four studios have allowed us to come back to campus, provide in-person classes and connect with the students who are attending class remotely,” said Reedy. “We are thrilled to be back in our studios, where our students are dancing, creating and connecting with one another.”

While they are working the kinks out of the system, including equipment that has been on back order, d’Amboise and Reedy have already hosted a guest artist residency on Sept. 20, during which Mason dancers worked with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancer and choreographer Hope Boykin.

“We were able to project her—life-size—into all four studios simultaneously, and she was choreographing and teaching as if she was standing in the room with all our students,” said d’Amboise.

Looking to the future, the Window Wall will allow Mason students the opportunity to be taught by leading artists from anywhere in the world. There will also be new opportunities for the faculty to expand their influence.

“Professors are no longer bound by geography and can share curriculum with universities and arts organization worldwide,” said d’Amboise, emphasizing this is also useful when travel is not curtailed by a pandemic.

d’Amboise, who also has an MFA from Mason, sees many future applications for the Window Wall, including showing classroom activities on exterior campus walls so students passing by can see what’s going on inside the studios, as well as projecting multidisciplinary performances in unique public spaces. He also looks forward to using the system for master classes in other disciplines such as theater, music, and the visual arts.

“We are having to re-imagine many aspects of our program during the pandemic, and this technology is allowing us to be able to provide experiences with artists in other locations—such as New York City, teach our distance-learning students and completely transform our opportunities for performance,” said Reedy.

"The Window Wall is both evolutionary and revolutionary,” said Rick Davis, dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “Teleconferencing has been around a long time—and is now, for better or worse, part of our daily reality. But Christopher's insight was to realize that, with just the right ingredients, the idea could scale up, creating true three-dimensional, life-size interactions across unlimited distances for groups of people in motion. I can't wait to see where it takes us, as teachers and students and artists."