The relationship between pain and athletic identity in youth ballet dancers

Ballet is considered both an art-form and a sport, intended to evoke an emotion through movement. Pain and the perception of pain is a part of ballet culture. Many adolescent ballet dancers begin training at a young age where musculoskeletal development is occurring congruently with psychological identity formation. Athletic identity is an identity facet defined as the degree an individual identifies with the athlete role. The relationship between pain and athletic identity during adolescence is currently unexplored.

Forty-four American female ballet dancers between 10 and 18 years olds participated in a cross-sectional study in 2022 that involved completing surveys to understand the effect of pain on an athlete's relationship with dance. Dancers experiencing pain and dancers not experiencing pain were matched based on specialization level and age. Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to identify significant pain group differences in AIMS measures and dancer characteristics.

Dancers who reported experiencing pain had higher scores of athletic identity on measures of exclusivity and negative affectivity. Though all dancers trained more than 8 months out of the year without taking an offseason, dancers experiencing pain trained significantly more compared to dancers who were not experiencing pain, which may attribute to higher exclusivity identification.

These findings highlight the importance for dancers to reserve time in their training for rest and recovery, especially if taking an offseason is not possible. Additionally, dancer-specific education in coping with injury, pain, or poor performance is essential to support the emotional and physical well-being of dancers.