Dancing Through the Pain

Dancing Through the Pain

Dilysia Martinez

09/25/2023

I’ve been a competitive dancer since I was about 5 years old. Countless late nights in my little black leotards and pink ballet tights, weekends living at my dance studio, and missing school to go to competitions or conventions for what I thought would be my career. So many teachers told me I should’ve been doing more with my dance career from the beginning and eventually, people from all over the world were telling me too. I had seasons where I received numerous offers to fly from Miami to New York to train with some of the most prestigious ballerinas in the United States, opportunities to dance alongside The Rockettes and more.

After years of dancing, I got to a point where I began to get injuries due to the naïve thought that since I had been doing this for so long, I wouldn’t need to warm up as often or as long as I did when first starting dance. Rehearsals started to consist of me breaking my nose, pulling my hamstrings almost once a month and even pulling one of my gluteal muscles the day before I had to perform my three solos at nationals. My dance teacher at the time was in school for physical therapy so of course, I took advantage and went to her for most of my injuries. She would always tell me the same thing though. “You should take a couple of weeks off until it heals, but we have competition soon so just take today off, ice it, and get back to dance tomorrow”. As a dancer who truly loved what she did, I listened with no hesitation or thought of the long-term outcome of not listening to my body. I didn’t want to stop dancing just as much as she didn’t want me missing rehearsals.

As much as dance teachers care about you and your well-being, injuries in dance are just never looked at seriously. This isn’t only an issue being said by my dance teacher but all around the world, dancers are taught from a very young age, to just dance through their pain and injuries instead of listening to their bodies. Many people might think that because dance isn’t a sport, the injuries can’t be as serious as a concussion when playing football. But that’s not the case at all. From the beginning, a lot is demanded of dancers both physically and mentally. “…there is an unusual emphasis on the physical accomplishment of extremely difficult technique, both quantitatively and qualitatively, mental focus, self-control, and an aesthetic which defies normal human anatomy and physiology,” said Air, a double board-certified and fellowship-trained physiatrist in sports and interventional spine medicine in California. Even if dance isn’t a sport, we require a lot of physical and mental strength to be successful in what we do.

It’s extremely frowned upon to take the required time off to heal correctly when a situation like this happens and on the rare occasion a dancer decides to take a break, they are seen as weak and overreacting by their colleagues. This plays a huge role in the process of us dancers not listening to our bodies when needed as well. There have been many times when I fractured my ankle or my arm and I thought about truly taking time off to heal but instead was rushed back to dance by the comments of being dramatic or hearing “it’s not that serious” when in reality it was that serious. An article from the Yale School of Medicine even says, “Many dancers will—at least initially—dance through the pain, self-treat, or seek help from a colleague”. They are 100% right. Dancers will only seek professional help if it gets in the way of their dancing ability. For example, the time I broke my nose. I had broken my nose mid-practice for a new dance with a guest choreographer and all I had done at the moment to fix the issue was get painter's tape and some paper towels to put on my face so I could continue dancing and not have to mess up the good flow we had going on in rehearsal.

At about 11 years old I had already been injured quite a few times but now instead of it being my hamstring, it’s an excruciating pain in my right hip flexor and my mom telling me she can hear a cracking noise in my hip as if two bones were rubbing against each other. My orthopedic doctor at the time, Dr. Saldana, did an x-ray for safe measure and said he had seen a small imperfection, but it wasn't significant enough to do anything about it. Dr. Saldana told me it was most likely just growing pains and to take two weeks off and return to dance. But like I said, breaks in dance don't exist. By the time COVID came around, I had gotten pretty good at just ignoring my “growing pains” until I collapsed while walking my dog and had to call my mom to pick me up just a few blocks away. I had gone back to the doctor, and he had told me to just take an entire season off which wasn’t a bad idea now that COVID had us all on lockdown.

After the pandemic, I decided not to return to dance because of my mental health issues at the time and it wasn't until my junior year of high school that I told my mom I missed it and wanted to go back. I remember going to return to dance and only working on my technique for the first couple of months back to strictly focus on my comeback for my senior year. As senior year began, I was doing cheerleading at my school while also dancing at the studio and I had never been happier. I wanted to do it right this time, so I listened to my body and went to see Dr. Saldana one more time for a check-up before the season truly began. This appointment was different. He was no longer telling me about my growing pains but instead telling me there was a big possibility I’d need surgery in the future and referred me to a hip specialist. I can still remember the sound of my mom crying as she heard that she would never be able to see her little girl on stage again, or getting in my car, sobbing on my way to school after hearing what was possibly the worst news ever at the time.

Fast forward to January of 2023, I finally stopped avoiding doctors and I now have a new orthopedic doctor who specializes in hips and dance-related injuries. This appointment was nothing like what I thought it would be. My new doctor, Dr. Hommen, told me that I'm lucky I'm so young because I will for sure be needing surgery on both my hips. I thought I was coming here to do physical therapy and work through my injury like I've always done but instead, we're planning a mini hip replacement surgery at the age of 18. My mind went completely blank, and my voice got shaky after hearing that not only would I not be able to dance my senior year but that I’d also be needing a very serious and intense surgery. It took me months of trying to figure out the perfect timing for my surgery during my busiest year. But, I finally scheduled it.

March 15, 2023, the week before my last spring break, I woke up at 4 a.m. for my surgery that was scheduled for 5 a.m. I arrived at Miami Surgical Center, got into my gown, and began the pre-op questionnaire while they began to give me IV fluids. I remember being so scared without my mom there but luckily the doctors saw how nervous I was and let her come hang out with me while giving me the laughing gas I needed for my surgery. I wasn’t out of surgery until about 2-3pm and didn’t fully wake up until 4:30 to both my parents laughing at me for how much I was craving apple juice after my surgery. What I thought would be the worst part ended. But I didn’t think about how my recovery would go. I had crutches and a brace that wrapped around my torso like a faja and went all the way down to my knee. It was so restricting, I couldn’t sit correctly, couldn’t lay correctly or even put my foot down correctly. I remember needing to ask for help from my little brother to do things I took for granted every day like get out of bed, use the bathroom and even bring food to my room. I had numerous nights of my mom having to help me shower because I couldn’t stand on my own, and friends needed to help me get comfortable on my bed. My neighbor even gifted me a pregnancy pillow to help me sleep in a comfortable position, because I didn’t sleep for days. My recovery was tough in the beginning but even then, that mentality of having to get over my injury was still there. Not even two weeks after my surgery, I returned to school. I had a meeting with my counselor about small accommodations I needed like an elevator key, but she looked at me like I was insane, “Dilysia, you just got a very intense surgery, what are you doing here?” I told her I was fine and that I could do school, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer and sent me home. I was so frustrated in the moment but in the end was so grateful she did that. Not only did she help me heal, but by using that extra time to rest, I was able to recover way faster than anticipated.

Now I'm six months post-op and able to do all the things I did before. I teach dance now and still dance from time to time, I stretch, and I have little to no restrictions on my hip mobility. But I can’t help but think about the difference in the outcome if I had never stopped stretching as much as I did or if I had listened to my body. This may have been my story, but I can name many friends who have gone through the same thing I went through at an even younger age. And if it happened to us, it happened to someone else in another state or even another country. As an industry, that will never go away or die down, dance studios and companies all over need to do a better job at taking care of the well-being of their dancers and allowing them to listen to their bodies.