Postural control of ballet dancers: a specific use of visual input for artistic purposes

Dance is a specific expression of human motor behaviour. This artistic physical activity depends upon an effective technical training with important postural components and necessitates the codification of sensory inputs to build mental representations of the action to be produced. Proprioception and vision being two fundamental sensory modalities in classical ballet, this study attempted to determine the importance of the visual input for postural control during the practice of this activity. First, this work compared the performances of 18 professional ballet dancers and 46 non-dancers on a platform of forces during static posturographic tests in open or closed eyes situation. Then, we studied how professional dancers achieve balance in postures specific of classical ballet: on demi-pointe and on pointe. The results indicate that visual inputs are important in classical ballet since dancers only performed better than controls in eyes open conditions. The similar results obtained on pointe with eyes open or closed conversely suggest that training in classical ballet develops specific modalities of balance which are not transferable to posture control in daily life situations.