MOTI offers Injury Screens with our Dance Physical Therapists to help performing artists reduce risk for serious injuries, better understand their movement patterns, and improve their self-care practices. MOTI provides this service for individual dancers; we have also partnered with dance education programs such as AMDA and Debbie Reynolds Scholarship Program to provide Screens for large groups of dancers.

Studies have demonstrated advantages of performing pre-season injury screens amongst dancers for the following reasons:

• There is poor reporting of injuries amongst dancers due to fear of loss of job, status, or letting down the team/company. Injury screens can help to identify injuries without relying on the dancer to report pain and/or injury themselves.
• Dancers show high risk of overuse injuries…4.4 injuries per 1,000 hrs of performing arts. Also, performance without cross training leads to higher risk of injury amongst dancers. Injury screens help to develop individualized cross training programs that can help to mitigate the dancer’s risk of overuse injuries.

In a Dance Injury Screen, the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) will get the dancer’s medical history from an orthopedic perspective and will screen for any existing injuries that may or may not have been previously diagnosed. Many of these types of musculoskeletal injuries are not identified or discussed in a standard physical. Furthermore, the DPT will identify any inefficient body mechanics that could lead to injury in the future. Injuries in dance are commonly due to overuse. Catching problematic movement patterns early on and correcting them with personalized exercise programming is an effective way to reduce injury risk. For example, they may identify that a dancer has poor hip control, which causes their knee to collapse in…which will stress the ACL, making it highly susceptible to tearing down the road. The goal is to help each dancer have the healthiest, most successful season and career possible!

What does a Dance Injury Screen involve?

• The DPT will spend 30 minutes one-on-one with each dancer
• The DPT will perform movement tests to assess where the dancer demonstrates potential problems
• The DPT will identify specific issues that need improvement, i.e. muscular tightness, muscular weakness, joint instability, lack of cardiovascular endurance
• The DPT will prescribe specific exercises that address these issues, making sure the dancer understands the areas of concern and the proper execution of the corrective exercises.
• The DPT will communicate with the dancer on a plan moving forward. For example, does the dancer need further medical intervention (such as an evaluation and/or imaging with an Orthopedic Surgeon, or ongoing Physical Therapy treatment)? If further medical intervention is required, the DPT can help refer the dancer to the right provider.

Injury Screens are not billable to insurance. This is a self-pay service. The cost is $80.

This service can be administered in person or virtually.

*To inquire about group rates, please email Director of Operations Katie Cutri at katie@motipt.com.