Dancers and the sun go back a long way. Professional dance as we know it owes its existence to the Sun King, Louis XIV of France. He adored dance and spent lavishly on importing the finest Italian ballet-masters (indeed it is because of his patronage and eager participation that ballet to this day uses French terminology). He performed as often as he could, apparently very well. Given the complexity of costume and footwear, he might have had trouble with really virtuoso aspects of dance technique, but he still gave his name to the “entrechat royale” (a slightly grandiose label for a changement battu). You and I as dancers owe our profession to that passionate amateur, the Sun King.
Today, though, we’re dealing with the real Sun, that blazing globe hanging over your head as you set off for another sweltering day. When it’s really hot outside (and as I write, we´re dealing with some of the hottest temperatures this country has ever known), you as a dancer face some very particular problems. Whatever you do, you’ll be drenched in sweat, and we’ve talked about the vital importance of hydration – you’re losing salt as well, so you’ve got to boost your intake of stuff like magnesium and sodium chloride to avoid muscle cramps, concentration lapses, heatstroke and the whole sorry litany of related problems. Not to mention the need to change practice gear, socks, shoes and the lot, several times a day, with all that that entails in terms of laundry, maybe ironing (maybe not…), packing and unpacking your bag, repeated showers leading to dry skin, damaged hair, reaction rashes as a result of excessive use of deodorant or cologne, increased consumption of water (heavy to carry home from the supermarket) and so it goes on.
“Dance is a sweat job“.
— Fred Astaire
The sun is big, powerful, and on duty 24/7. It fires off massive amounts of radiation, which we principally perceive as heat and light [1]. Visible light is accompanied by ultraviolet light in two different wavelengths, UVA and UVB, and by infrared light. (The third ultraviolet light, UVC, gets filtered out before it reaches us).
Of course, everyone longs for good weather – we need light, indeed we, and almost every other living thing, only survive thanks to sunlight, and a chain of events which supplies energy for life. Plants, literally, live off sunlight. The extraordinary process of photosynthesis lets them use energy from sunlight, with water and CO2, to produce sugars, which fuel their cell growth and life processes. Human life depends on consuming plants, either directly (fruit, vegetables and so on) or indirectly (animals which themselves feed on plants). Without photosynthesis none of us would be here. We can’t do it ourselves, so we’re lucky that plants exist, (a point which needs to be kept in mind in any debate about saving the environment).
“When you put a log on the fire, the light and heat you see is, in a literal sense, the decades of sunshine that tree basked in over its lifetime.”
― Peter Brannen
Insofar as your health is concerned, sunlight is both very good for you and very dangerous. You need it to maintain healthy circadian rhythms, melatonin production, and the essential Vitamin D, but excessive exposure to ultraviolet light increases your chance of developing skin or other cancers, as well as DNA damage. If you get a lot of sun, you should get regular check-ups from a dermatologist. Skin cancers are severe medical conditions and can cause long-term (and possibly fatal) illness. Three common types are basal- or squamous-cell carcinoma or melanoma. The damage can initially be minute, and difficult to detect, but cancers grow, and eventually become serious.
Too much sun also adversely affects the quality of your skin, leading to thickening, premature aging, distorted pigmentation patterns and of course sunburn. (It’s also hard on your eyes, so money spent on good, functional sunglasses with serious UV filters may save your sight, and beats fancy ”eye-wear” every time.) You need high-quality, high-factor sun-protection cream as well, and a proper hat which shades your face. If it looks good, that’s an extra bonus, but its main job is to protect you.
You function best at an internal temperature of about 37.5° C, and your body has evolved methods of maintaining this temperature. This ability is vital to survival [2]. When you’re too cold, your system maintains heat by shivering [3], causing your muscles to contract and relax very fast, thereby producing warmth, especially at the centre of the body because if your internal temperature drops below 35° C you are edging into hypothermia.
At the other extreme, if your core temperature goes much above 40°C, you are overheating, a condition known as hyperthermia, with irregular heartbeat, exhaustion, concentration difficulties, headache, loss of feeling and coordination, reduced urine output, cramps, seizures, unconsciousness and coma; the outcome can be fatal.
Dancers, like cats, are highly physical beings. You are by nature active and energetic, so please take the problems of overheating and insufficient hydration seriously and look after yourself. You probably feel that the heat of the sun on skin and muscles is wonderful, and of course you’re right. That glorious freedom from nagging pains in back, knees, calves or ankles is just so rare and so easy to love (indeed, dancers who are used to warm climates experience problems if they wind up working in cold dark snowy places). However, just because your muscles feel pliable and hot, that doesn’t mean you can skip the warm-up. There’s much more to warming up than merely enjoying that sensual trickle of sweat down your long, sun-tanned limbs. OK, you feel good and you look great, but that doesn’t mean you’re warm.
“If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.“
— Katherine Dunham
A real dance warm-up gets your body ready to dance. It will raise your pulse rate, get some synovial juice into those joints, speed up your muscle contractions and make them stronger and more reliable, improve your circulation and the oxygen supply to the muscles, pump up the transmission rates and receptivity of your nervous system, improve your flexibility and joint range of movement, release cascades of useful hormones, fire up enzyme activity in the muscles, and give you a chance to practice specific movement patterns and sequences you’ll need in the dance activity which follows. It also helps you to focus on the job and raises your level of alertness while speeding up your reactions. All this reduces your risk of musculoskeletal injury, and you can’t get any of it by lying in a sun-lounger with your toes in the sea.
“Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder
So here’s the take-home message for dancers. Look after yourself, don’t get burnt, don’t overheat, pour in lots of cool, refreshing liquids and electrolytes, and when you’re going to dance, even if the temperatures are equatorial, please, please warm up and cool down properly. And enjoy the sunshine while you can — I hope you have the time of your dancing life!
© Jeremy Leslie-Spinks
References
1. Sunlight From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Beker BM, Cervellera C, De Vito A, Musso CG (2018) Human Physiology in Extreme Heat and Cold. Int Arch Clin Physiol 1:001. doi.org/10.23937/iacph-2017/1710001
3. https://www.uv.es/…physiology/…physiology/physiological-effects-cold…/GasetaRecerca…
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