The Embodied Dancer: A Guide To Optimal Performance takes the reader on an exploratory journey through the key factors and concepts that lead to a healthy and fulfilling career as a dancer. Interactive features, such as videos and quizzes, allow the reader to engage with the content and to try out placement and exercises as they read along.
Content
Beginning with some basic, essential anatomy and physiology, the book moves on to describe how to find the balance between flexibility and stability, how to manage hypermobility, and how to unlock the secrets of dynamic alignment. Sections such as High Legs with Healthy Hips, and Tips for Great Feet, give vital information on how to safely achieve these sometimes troublesome movements, and the chapter on Common Injuries helps dancers to understand and avoid the injury pitfalls. Psychological issues, such as performance anxiety and perfectionism, are explored in The Mental Edge, giving dancers the tools they need to manage and harness the power of their minds. With a further chapter devoted to the topic of nutrition and how to safely fuel for performance, the book provides everything a dancer needs to achieve their dancing goals and dreams.
Audience Appeal
While the book is primarily aimed at the aspiring young dancer, it will also be an invaluable tool for professional dancers and dance educators. Additionally, many of the concepts are applicable to a wide variety of exercise modalities. Those who practice Pilates, yoga, marital arts, gymnastics, fitness classes, and recreational dance, or who are just interested in keeping the body flexible and active, will all find something in these pages to help them.
With the authors’ backgrounds as professional dancers, as well as being specialists in dance science, dance medicine, exercise rehabilitation, and movement re-education, their combined expertise represents a wealth of information that can help dancers to realize both their technical and artistic potential.
