Sore feet. An aching back. Hours upon hours of class where meticulous choreography is executed over and over again, combined with evening rehearsals. These are just a few of the issues plaguing college dancers. And they’re not stopping anytime soon. According to the US National Library of Medicine, one in five dancers had “at least moderate symptoms” of either depression or generalized anxiety disorder. In addition to this, dancers are more likely to struggle with perfectionism, according to a 2021 article from Psychology Today.
The Chronicle spoke with University of Utah student and faculty dancers to discuss mental health in the field.
Student perspectives
“I feel like a lot of dancers are a lot harder on themselves mentally than physically,” said U senior Ella Frank. Frank has been involved with the modern dance program throughout her undergraduate career, but opted not to major in the discipline. Frank said her self-criticism doesn’t always translate to an audience, however. “If I make a turn, but it was not exactly how I wanted it to go. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I suck today.’ But no one else in the audience would have even noticed.”
Frank described the overall workload of the classes within the program as “a lot.” “It’s very long days … from 9 to 5 you’re doing classes, and then from 5 to 9 you’re rehearsing for a show. It’ll infiltrate your whole life,” she added.
Her personal journey with burnout, she said, led her to “tell what things were bringing me joy and what things were kind of dragging me down a little bit.” Within the program as a whole, she said, “the mental health conversations that we have are a lot about burnout.”
“There are definitely conversations about mental health and physical health,” she added.
Burnout
Hannah Kiers, a modern dance major in her third year with the program, said her experience with burnout has negatively affected some aspects of her performances. “When you’re that burnt out, it’s harder to physically push yourself, and emotionally, it’s harder to perform,” she said. “If you don’t give your body time to rest, it’s hard to move as full as you would normally be able to.”
Kiers said she has developed various strategies to manage burnout, most notably the practice of “switching up routine as much as possible, because sticking with the same thing can be just exhausting.” She also mentioned finding fun hobbies or activities “completely separate” from dance has been one of her “best strategies.”
How she tells when she’s starting to lean towards burnout starts with brain fog. “It’s harder to pick up and remember things.” A reminder Kiers keeps in mind when she’s on the cusp of burnout is “if I don’t take a break, then I will be forced to take a break. Whether that be getting sick or injured or just so physically burnt out.”
She also said conversations and an overall focus on mental health are “encouraged” within the program, but actually taking time off can be burdensome. “A lot of our grade is based on attendance, so if we miss a certain amount of classes, our grade drops.”
Physical fatigue
Stephanie Cotton, an MFA candidate at the U’s School of Dance, has a background in ballet as well as dancer injury prevention.
As a teacher, she said she herself has dealt with overwhelm as well as her students. “I’ve seen so many dancers experience burnout and I myself have dealt with burnout numerous times, both in and out of the dance studio.”
She pointed to other classes and responsibilities as potential reasons for experiencing mental and physical fatigue. “These undergrads, they have a lot on their plates. A lot of them are double majors. A lot of them are taking north of 20 credits a semester. That’s a recipe for burnout,” she said.
As a teacher, she also referenced her own version of burnout stemming from helping her students. “It’s really easy to almost care too much sometimes. You want to be there for [your students], of course, but there has to be some boundary there, otherwise you will get burned out as a teacher,” she said.
Other challenges she faces are learning how to give constructive feedback and balancing criticism with vulnerability. “I think that as a teacher, you have to have a healthy balance between strict, challenging discipline, but also making them feel safe and vulnerable,” she said.
She mentioned dancers’ tendency for perfectionism as another key component of the type of feedback she offers. “99% of the time, the dancer will already know the correction you’re going to give, and they’re already thinking about it, and they’re already working on it before you say it,” she added.
Too critical of feedback, she said, can lead to dancers becoming drained. “Not everything has to be said all the time. It leads to burnout, and that leads to overwhelm,” said Cotton.
Teaching in dance
Satu Hummasti, a modern dance professor at the U, said the culture of modern dance has changed due to changing teaching philosophies. “The teacher sets a tone of competitiveness or not. Where contemporary dance training is right now, especially in the university system, it has, I would say, for the past 20 years, really gotten away from this hyper competitive atmosphere.”
Hummasti said a common question in the dance world is “if a teacher or an environment isn’t being harsh, then can you foster excellence? How can you push yourself to that without me?”
As an instructor, however, she said that she does “want the dancers to make really good work and become really great dancers, and I want that for their sake, but without doing something that’s going to cause them damage.”
Choreography and mental health
She mentioned the specific classes she teaches as particularly personal. “I teach a lot of choreography classes, and it’s very vulnerable for students to share choreography,” she said. “Once you get to a certain point, a lot of dance is mental.”
To prevent criticism that might be too intense or overwhelming for students, she looks at choreography more holistically. She places them at the center of the room and analyzes their choreography. She reminds students during this process that they themselves as a choreographer aren’t being critiqued, rather that the class is “invested in looking at the piece.”
Her critiques are “more functional, more analytical, and less personal,” she said.
Personally, her most effective strategy to cope with burnout and what she suggests to dancers is to “go see something that’s art related, but not dance. Go to a museum, go to see a play, go to see music, go to see sports, a different art form or a different physical form, just something that’s different.”
