Lower Limb and Trunk Biomechanics After Fatigue in Competitive Female Irish Dancers

Abstract

When fatigued, dancers displayed a decline in landing performance in terms of aesthetics as well as increased ankle- and knee-joint loading, potentially exposing them to a greater risk of injuries.

Static Balancing Ability and Lower Body Kinematics Examination of Hungarian Folk Dancers: A Pilot Study Investigating the “Kalocsai Mars” Dance Sequence

“…Therefore, it may happen as dancers have to dance for a longer time and cannot pay enough attention to controlling the movements entirely, which may let their limbs move more freely, leading to an energetically more expensive increment in the joints' ROM. Furthermore, Wild et al showed that in the case of Irish dancers, after a certain amount of fatiguing session, the dancers landed with a reduced ankle plantar flexion and external hip rotation and increased hip-adduction alignment [5].…”

“…The most dangerous elements for the joints are the leg slamming elements, because they can cause cartilage wear [3,4]. Such folk steps, when the legs are placed forcefully onto the floor, are similar to some steps of Irish folk dances, which have been examined previously from a biomechanical point of view [5].…”

“…The different dance styles can be characterized by the angular displacement and angular velocity of the body segments. The derived observations can be built into dancers' everyday practice, such as lowering the risk of injury for ballet and folk dancers, analyzing the effect of fatigue, or investigating their accuracy to increase performance [5,7,[10][11][12]. The lower limbs (knee joint, ankle joint, and hip joint) are the most frequently injured areas in both ballet and contemporary dancers; therefore, most studies primarily focused on these areas [6,8,11].…”

“…The study of Wild et al investigated the effects of fatigue on lower limb and trunk angles, as well as the peak lower limb joint forces and moments of competitive female Irish dancers during a dance-specific single-limb landing. Compared with the prefatigue trials, Irish dancers landed with reduced ankle plantar flexion and external hip rotation and increased hip-adduction alignment postfatigue, potentially exposing them to a greater risk of injuries [5]. Other than injury prevention, increased dance performance can also be achieved by analyzing kinematic and kinetic parameters that characterize expert performance or efficiency of movement, such as coordination, especially when different skill levels are examined separately.…”

Computational Approaches to Music Motor Performance: Clustering of Percussion Kinematics Underlying Performance Style

“…In marimba performance specifically, torso movements were found to elicit feelings of happiness, sadness, and anger in raters viewing silent performance videos (e.g., Dahl and Friberg, 2007 ). In alternate rhythmic contexts, such as dance, torso movements are also critical for emotional communication (e.g., Wild et al, 2017 ). Overall, the postural sway cluster may reflect an emotionally expressive approach, and therefore was considered to encompass an emotionally vibrant style.…”