Tara Rynders has always associated dance with healing. While navigating a tumultuous childhood that often required her to care for her siblings, she found refuge in the studio. And when her sister lost her speech after developing acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare inflammatory disease of the brain and spinal cord, Rynders used dance as a […]

Not all doctors get what dancers do. Even something as small as how a foot fits in a pointe shoe might not be familiar to a doctor without dance knowledge, says Dr. Kathleen Davenport, company physician with Miami City Ballet and the director of physiatry at Hospital for Special Surgery Florida. “That can be everything […]

It’s no secret that many dancers and choreographers frequently live paycheck to paycheck. Unplanned expenses—particularly emergency medical costs—can wipe out savings and leave artists scrambling. And the issue is only exacerbated by the lack of health insurance coverage common among dancers. Enter New York Foundation for the Arts and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. The organizations […]

Throughout the dance field, artists are proving that early retirement is no longer an inevitability. “The myth that you have to stop dancing once you hit your 30s is pretty much gone,” says Julia Iafrate, founder of the Columbia Dance Medicine clinic in New York City. However, staying healthy requires consistency and hard work. Caring […]