Could you be part of my doctoral research?

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Painsong: A narrative study of career-changing

injury and illness in elite professional dancers, with implications for clinicians

I’ve had a wonderful, eventful life as a dancer and ballet-master with major companies all over the world. Now, unfortunately, my dancing days are done, thanks to a degenerative, inoperable spinal condition. No more ballet for me.

But how about you? Are you a former professional dancer whose career was ended / radically changed by injury or illness? Do you know someone who answers this description? I’m looking for volunteers to be part of my doctoral thesis research study.

Professional dancers live with constant fatigue, stress, and injury. Long-term injury or illness can destroy our careers, even our very identity. Our specialised work, movement range, physicality, nutrition, and lifestyle seem mysterious to many clinicians. Frustration, incomprehension, and distrust can frequently arise – damaged dancers may also face unemployment, chronic ill health, and isolation.

I am looking for participants with precisely your elite performing background and your experience of career-changing injury or incapacity. I’m hoping to get up to 30 volunteers, at least 18 years old and able to understand, and give informed consent to, their involvement. Before the research begins, I’ll send volunteers complete information on the study, research design, details of safeguards, data security and confidentiality, and a consent form.

Together, we’ll record three video interviews, scheduled to fit your availability. I’ll ask you to tell me about your life and career, the injury or illness which made you stop dancing, your feelings as a patient and how you have got on since then. I’ll compare and analyse the data, identify common themes, then use these to design educational programmes for dancers and for doctors, to enhance their communication and to help other injured performers. You can pause or stop at any time, and I will send you the written transcript on request.

When it’s all done, we will hold a webinar summarising our work, to which everyone who takes part will be invited, and where I’ll be happy to answer questions.

The findings will be part of my doctoral thesis, and may appear in academic publications, conference presentations, a report commissioned by an external organisation, websites, videos etc. I will use pseudonyms to present interview quotations so that you are not personally identified in the study results.

I really hope you’d like to be part of this. If you’re interested in volunteering, or you would like to discuss the research with someone beforehand (or if you have questions), please contact me, on contact@thisdancinglife.com