Dancers and Holidays

(image copyright: Jeremy Leslie-Spinks)

“Yes, to dance beneath the diamond skies with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow”.
— Bob Dylan, Mr. Tambourine Man

For a lot of us, dance is our passion. We live to dance; it’s the one thing we’d rather do than anything else. It gives us freedom, aesthetic delight, flow, endorphins, personal fulfilment, musical thrills, excitement, social buzz – the list goes on and on, and we wouldn’t change it for anything.

But – dancing is hard work. It’s physically and mentally demanding; over time, you know it’s going to take its toll. There are moments when just getting through to the end of the show, the week, the tour, the season, can be an exercise in dogged determination, an obstinate refusal to give up before you’ve crossed the finishing line. Professional dancers know this all too well, especially towards the end of the season. A dancer’s life is wonderful, but it can be rather exhausting.

Fortunately (and just about now, as it happens…) there are holidays. And you know, you really do need your holidays. They are so fantastic, and so important for your health, you should get the best you can out of them. You’re not just being lazy, your mind and body both actually need the time to recover, and you’ll dance better afterwards if you look after yourself now. With this in mind, we’ve organised some thoughts from the experts.

Research has uncovered a link between holidays and creativity [1], and there is also evidence that holidays can actually improve the health of your heart. It has been clearly demonstrated that holidays also enhance your general health and wellness [2], particularly if you are getting enough high-quality sleep. One study of professional classical dancers [3] showed significant improvements in their flexibility, anaerobic power, leg strength, and lung efficiency after their holiday. This suggests that they were probably pretty burned-out at the end of the previous season, and that their summer break did them a lot of good.

Holidays tend to be rather expensive. As you’re paying all that hard-earned money to get away, you’ll want to start enjoying your break as soon as possible. However — one annoying thing that can happen almost right away, which is that you may suddenly not feel very well. You might have picked up a bug from the air conditioning on the plane, or maybe you can’t sleep properly, or you have an upset stomach or a temperature, or various other things you really don’t need right now.

Many people have this problem, and scientists are still working out why it happens. One theory [4] is that your system has been stressed for a long time (pretty much unavoidable for dancers). All at once the tension ceases, and your body abruptly stops secreting corticosteroids. These stress hormones are part of your fight-or-flight reflexes, and you use them throughout the season to cope with nerves, shows, emergencies and other challenges. Now these stress hormones are suddenly no longer flooding your system, you can find yourself in what’s called “immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome”, which means your defences are down, and you get sick more easily than usual.

This is a sad thing to happen, when you’ve been looking forward to your break. One way to avoid it is to try and ease the transition from work to vacation. Don’t rush out of your last performance and jump immediately on the first plane to paradise. Your body’s tired – it can’t cope with that kind of shock. Take a couple of days’ time to let your system slowly re-adjust to the altered rhythms and patterns of a non-dancing schedule. You can use the time to do your packing and ironing, deal with the practical stuff that always gets put off, and fit in a little, gradual, pre-travel relaxation. Take it slow and easy, and your immune system will thank you for it by keeping you healthy on your vacation.

With luck once you get there, you can catch up on some lost sleep. If you’ve been under stress (and most of us have), you may have woken up several times a night for much of the season, with a head full of anxiety and distraction; you’ve probably also been getting up far too early for far too long. (I’ll be doing a post soon about dancers and sleep; it’s more important to you than you may realise). Anyway, now you’re on your holiday, and suddenly there’s peace and quiet. By rebalancing your sleep patterns, you can save yourself a lot of hassle with your health. You may well have acquired some niggling sore places throughout the season – a recurrent knee problem, sore toes, persistent back pain, stiff joints – all dancers know these tiresome afflictions. Sleep can help your system to sort these out. Sleep is when your body and your mind both go into self-healing mode. Muscle microtraumas get repaired, your brain sorts through the difficult bits and re-establishes orderly function – even your blood pressure improves[5]. It is known that cardiovascular problems, diabetes, depression, poor coordination and certain types of cancer have all been associated with sleep deprivation, so this is a very good chance to protect yourself against that whole catalogue of catastrophes. After a couple of days with enough sleep and no stress or deadlines, you’re going to feel calmer, more relaxed, and a lot better.

One way to keep that wonderful calm feeling is to plan your activity schedule sensibly, without placing excessive demands on yourself. If you feel like going to the beach, then that’s where you should go – if not, then why force yourself? That applies to sightseeing as well – just because you can go to every ancient temple within miles doesn’t mean you have to. Why wear yourself out trudging around in the heat, just so you can say you’ve done it? The great thing here is mindfulness. You can get so much delight and satisfaction out of small, restful things that catch your eye or your imagination. Look at the old lady selling watermelons at the stall on the corner – you could watch her for hours, enjoying the colours of the fruit, the sounds of the port, and the way the breeze shifts the edge of the awning. Just let go, and be at peace. Unless you’ve got an urgent deadline to produce a book on the antiquities of the region by the time you get back, make it easy on yourself. Relax — enjoy the watermelon.

By the same token, it helps to stay off your mobile phone as much as possible. This may not be possible for everyone – there can be family reasons, or professional demands or various other urgent matters that oblige you to stay in touch. The thing is, using your phone a lot is something that belongs to your ordinary working life. As you’ve come on holiday to rest and heal your scars, telephone stress is probably counterproductive. If you absolutely have to use the phone, try to keep it brief, and limit calls to a set time each day or every couple of days. That way at least you will have a chance to put everything aside when you’ve finished talking, and get your sun-hat on again.

Now I have to try not to sound like somebody’s mother in this bit, but there are some things which are important to remember, so just bear with me for a few phrases — I’m sure you know all this stuff anyway, but here goes….

• Your passport – it’s very valuable. Don’t leave it (or any other important stuff) lying about in your room, keep it safe. Photocopy it before you leave home, just in case – same with your bank and credit cards, your insurance certificate, your travel tickets, your luggage and your driving licence. Keep the copies somewhere safe, not with the originals.
• Get enough water on board every day (and make sure it’s drinkable, because in some places it isn’t – ask first, and if in doubt, stick to bottled water).
• Don’t have ice in your drinks while you’re there – you don’t know what it’s made of or where it’s been.
• Salads and raw vegetables can carry some nasty diseases if they’re not very carefully and thoroughly washed. If you’re not sure, don’t eat it. Wash any fruit or veg. you buy, as a matter of course.
• Sunburn can make you feel really awful – it also ages your skin and can be very dangerous. Use a lot of high-factor sun protection cream, and put more on several times a day, because it washes off when you swim, and wears off anyway after a while. A sun-hat makes you look great, and can protect you from heat-stroke.
• Before you go, check what sort of plugs you’re going to need there. (You won’t be pleased to find you can’t charge any of your devices until you get home). Also, unplug your kit when you leave the room, and remember to pack all your chargers and cables for the homeward trip.
• You might like to go a little easy on the partying. Your system isn’t used to the local drinks, and you can lose control with alarming suddenness. Know when to stop.
• Make sure you know where you’re staying and how to get back there, even after a night out. Be observant when you are out – don’t go wandering about dark, unfamiliar streets alone. A lot of crime is opportunistic, so don’t leave anything to chance. And if there’s suddenly a lot of shouting going on, or you’re in a crowded place, or in any situation you don’t understand, see how you can get somewhere less worrying, and do it as unobtrusively as possible. There’s no need to worry unduly, but do keep your eyes open, and don’t take chances.
• Be clever about how you dress. You don’t want to upset anyone, and there are places where it can be embarrassing or even dangerous to offend local notions of decency and customs.

So now you’re going off on your well-deserved holiday, and I hope you have a truly memorable and wonderful time. Kick back and relax, and take each moment as it comes. You might have set yourself up with a small but useful vocabulary of whatever they speak there. It can be a lot of fun to try and speak to residents, and people are often very appreciative when you make the effort to speak to them in their own language, even if there are a few mistakes along the way (no-one expects you to speak perfectly). And while you’re there, use the opportunity to take a lot of photographs. You’ll be able to keep your holiday “high” for a long time, even months or years, just by skimming through them. Later, next season, when everything’s getting frantic again, you can recapture the ease and wellbeing of your holiday simply by revisiting these precious reminders.

You know, of course, that this holiday, like all good stories, has a beginning, a middle and an end. If you want to take a lot of happy memories back with you, it might be worth planning the final stages of the adventure in detail, so that you can be sure of getting back to the airport, or station, or ferry-terminal with plenty of time to spare. That way you can keep the trip home comfortable and stress-free, and the good times will roll on a lot longer, giving you strength, optimism and peace of mind as souvenirs of your good times to take home and treasure.

Try as well to plan to get back after the holiday is over with enough time to transition back into the reality of work a day or two before everything kicks off again. That way you’ll have time to sort out all the practical stuff in peace and quiet, before picking up the familiar, busy and time-consuming routine of your dancing life.

Have fun – have a great holiday, stay well and enjoy every moment of it. Bon voyage!

“She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar”.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander

References