Low back pain in the Japanese female modern dance students

Kuno-Mizumura, Mayumi PhD, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan; and Ohtake, Yuko PT, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo

Professional dancers including modern dance experience high rates of musculoskeletal injury, however, there have been no previous reports investigated the injury incidence and patterns of musculoskeletal injury in Japanese modern dancers. So the purpose of this study was to investigate the musculoskeletal injury in university dance students who is majoring modern dance and the relationship between low back pain incidence and their movement patterns of the low back examine by the motion analysis. 

Subjects were 27 Japanese female university students in the department of dance and dance education. All of them were participants of major modern dance competition of the university in Japan. Injury data were analyzed from the questionnaire at the beginning of the rehearsals. The kinematic variables were evaluated by the video image during the standing reach movement from the side. 21 students (77.7%)  had previous injury history by any exercise and the most common injury was ankle sprain (48.1%). 18 students including 14 students from 1^st grade claimed pains in their body. 12 students of them claimed low back pain and 9 of them were 1^st grade students who had no experience of modern dance before entering the university. 

Our results demonstrated that the university modern dance students have high risk of low back pain especially for the students who have just started taking modern dance classes at the university. Biomechanical characteristics of modern dance movement should be evaluated compared to the other form of dance, such as classical ballet, and the relationship between movement patterns of modern dance and injury incidence should be examined to prevent musculoskeletal injury by modern dance.