John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He was a brilliant writer, and countless quotes remain to inspire and guide us. Like this one, which he probably said:
“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway. So go ahead and bounce in that stretch because we both know you’re going to no matter what I say.”
-John Steinbeck
‘As if any amount of stretching will make up for those biscuits’
I get many questions about avoiding dance injuries. In a highly competitive and increasingly physical field, many dancers find it difficult to balance their desire to go hard with their desire to enjoy a lasting dance career. Advancements in sports medicine, physical therapy, stretching, and our understanding of technique have proven to be a double-edged sword: Dancers are now capable of movements that would have been impossible without these improvements, but such movements continue to increase the need for ever more advances.
Rather than committing to a cycle like that, the most effective way to avoid injuring yourself while dancing is to injure yourself doing something else entirely.
Why else would this woman, ostensibly charged with the physical well-being of her student, be performing such a stretch?
Obviously she is making sure that her student will never injure herself dancing by making sure that her student will never dance. What pragmatism! By preventing the problem before it ever has a chance to arise, this woman should be held up as a teacher who truly cares about preventing dance injury.
To be fair, she is far from the only one. Feel free to comment with stories and pictures of other teachers who are also highly motivated to prevent dance injuries by preventing dancing.