Applications of Biomechanics Analysis in Dance

Abstract

The field of sports biomechanics aims to improve performance and decrease injury rates in athletes. Although first developed thinking of athletes, sports biomechanics analysis was expanded to the dance field due to the similarities between athletes and dancers, including high workload, high injuries incidence, and the constant seeking of performance improvements. For the past few decades, a field focused only on dancers, thus called “dance biomechanics,” has used sports biomechanics literature and produced its own knowledge analysing different dancers and many types of dance. Many questions have been made about dance, and some of those have been addressed by dance biomechanics. This chapter will explain how science has tried to answer many of them.