Article Preview
TopBackground
The DMS field came to be known between the 1970’s and 1980’s, emerging from the integration of areas and the needs that surfaced with the discovery that the demands of the professional dance practice itself, exhaustive and / or misapplied, could cause serious and numerous injuries (Ryan, 1997). These findings were initially made by schools and companies of classical ballet. Even though professional dance triggered the organization of the DMS field, Dance and Medicine have always been united (Calvo, 2000), since the practice of ancient ritual dances to heal many, or through the use of dance for children with special needs, for instance. Consequently, studies in Dance Medicine have permeated other fields of study, such as Anthropology, Sociology, Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance Therapy, even before the 1950’s (International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport & Dance [ICHPER-SD], 2018). Therefore, it could be stated that a precise definition for the DMS field, hybrid in nature, has come about when the Human Movement Sciences embraced dance as a topic of discussion and academic research.
Historically, the first record known of the organization of injuries in corporal practices dates to circa 1713, by Bernardino Ramazzini in his book “Diseases of the workers”, in the area of occupational health. In the 19th century, the diseases of athletes began to be widely described and in 1928 the term Sports Medicine was firstly used at the 2nd Winter Olympic Games in Switzerland (Ryan, 1997). Even though Occupational and Sports Medicine had officially been recognized by the late 1920’s, Dance Medicine was still marginalized as a field.
In the development of research and advancement of the area, the first dance injuries were officially identified in the “Occupational marks and other physical signs.”, written by Francesco Ronchese, in 1948. According to Calvo (2000), Ronchese described that dance could modify the structure of a ballerina’s feet and cause a hypertrophy of the calves. As a result, the field of DMS became known between the 1970’s and 1980’s, stemming from an outgrowth of the Sports Science and Sports Medicine boom occurred by that time. From this point onwards, and to a greater extent from the 1970’s dance medicine publications were available especially in Russian, Belgian and French (Calvo, 2000). In 1979 the term Dance Medicine was used at the 1st International Symposium on the Medical and Orthopedic Aspects of Dance in New York, and in 1982 two important medical symposia on Dance were held in Paris (Ryan, 1997).
Concerning training and the gathering of professionals in organized associations, it was only in 1985 that the first course in Dance Medicine was created in Alicante, Spain, coordinated by medical doctor (MD) Juan Bosco Calvo. This course strengthened the knowledge of health and dance professionals and promoted the formation of the Spanish Association of Dance Medicine, ASEMEDA (Calvo, 2000). In 1990, dance medicine practitioners, dance educators, dancers and applied sports and movement scientists from the United States of America (USA), Spain, England and Belgium formed the International Association of Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS), to develop actions that could improve health, well-being, training and performance of dancers, cultivating educational, medical and scientific excellence. Currently, IADMS has got members that belong to more than 35 countries. They organize an annual conference and the “Journal of Dance Medicine & Science”, among other actions.