"The Show Must go on" : The Experience of Injuries Among Dancers: Fears, Thoughts, and Beliefs. A Qualitative Study

This qualitative, cross-sectional study aims at describing the experience of Italian dancers with injury. Dancers face a high risk of sustaining one or more injuries during their career (87-94%), which may lead to physical, psychological, and socioeconomic consequences affecting dancer's lives and careers both short and long-term. Dancers report fearing injury and its consequences and believing in the existence of a stigma around injury and injured colleagues; many of them also try to self-manage pain and delay reporting injuries to healthcare professionals, possibly making its outcomes worse. This study will collect data from dancers via focus groups and individual interviews, investigating dancers' experiences, thoughts, and beliefs about injury. Records from the interviews will be transcribed ad verbatim and analyzed using the framework method to synthetize the data and highlight the most meaningful content. Understanding dancers' thoughts and behaviors regarding past or possible future injuries may be beneficial in improving treatment efficacy and designing adequate education and prevention strategies. It may also help raise awareness of dancers' complex and unique needs, and the importance of having accessible, specialized professionals around dance companies and schools.