Perspectives in Performing Arts Medicine Practice II

Performing Arts Medicine (PAM) is a multidisciplinary specialization that combines the fields of performing arts and healthcare fields, addressing the health and wellness of performing artists. This book’s theme focuses on performing arts medicine as an occupational health issue that impacts wellness in public health and imparts the arts in healing. It presents the treatment and care of mental and physical health of the performing artists and environmental factors that impact prevention and care, drawing on scientific knowledge in practice. It aims to share knowledge from experienced practitioners, novel research findings, region-specific dance experiences, and support for using body-mind movements for healing. An experience-based narrative is emphasized and supported by theory-based knowledge. Conversely, experimental and observational science is backed by practical implications and classroom usage.

The text is structured into three parts: Occupational Health Perspectives, Physical Health and Wellness, and Social-Behavioral Health and Care. Part One begins with a chapter on hazards in performing arts with vivid illustrations of the risky stage setups and long hours of bodily abusive practice. It concludes with a chapter that explores the new conceptual frame of neurophenomenology as a philosophy and methodology in musician training and rehabilitation of impaired musicians. The second part includes information on voice assessment and individualized care plans, the use of joint hypermobility, and a case study on a fifth metatarsal fracture of a professional ballet dancer and her length of recovery. The final part opens with chapters on performance anxiety and continues with information on resilience, performance traumatic stress disorder, and implementing trauma-informed care into practice with musicians, and ends with chapters on communal healing with Drumming as medicine and Parkinson’s Disease in dance movement and an interprofessional collaboration between athletic training and dance.

Written as a counterpart to 2020’s Perspectives in Performing Arts Medicine Practice, this second volume utilizes theory-based practices that fill a gap by making them easily accessible to the multidisciplinary constituents of performing arts medicine, including healthcare professionals, performing artists, and educators.