An Assessment of Postural Sway in Ballet Dancers During First Position, Relevé and Sauté with Accelerometers

Multi-segmental postural coordination in professional ballet dancers.

Ballet dancers have heightened balance skills, but previous studies that compared dancers to non-dancers have not quantified patterns of multi-joint postural coordination. This study utilized a visual tracking task that required professional ballet dancers and untrained control participants to sway with the fore-aft motion of a target while standing on one leg, at target frequencies of 0.2 and ...

Analysis of foot load during ballet dancers' gait.

Ballet is an art that puts extreme demands on the dancer's musculoskeletal system and therefore significantly affects motor behavior of the dancers. The aim of our research was to compare plantar pressure distribution during stance phase of gait between a group of professional ballet dancers and non-dancers. Thirteen professional dancers (5 men, 8 women; mean age of 24.1 ± 3.8 years) and 13 non...

Delayed menarche and amenorrhea in ballet dancers.

Position and velocity coupling of postural sway to somatosensory drive.

Light touch contact of a fingertip to a stationary surface provides orientation information that enhances control of upright stance. Slight changes in contact force at the fingertip lead to sensory cues about the direction of body sway, allowing attenuation of sway. In the present study, the coupling of postural sway to a moving contact surface was investigated in detail. Head, center of mass, ...

Postural sway during retinal image stabilisation.

Posturographic measurements using a piezoelectric platform were made in normal subjects while wearing a combination of spectacle and contact lens providing partial stabilisation of the retinal image (RIS). The amount of postural sway seen while wearing the device at rest is intermediate between the "normal vision" and "eyes closed" conditions, and increases with increasing amounts of RIS. Howev...