Cultural stressors

Dance community and environment

The dance profession and community might nurture stress and specific stressors in dancers who, in turn, are influenced by the performance culture of which they are a part of. This entails performance pressure, rigid and narrow-minded identity, ego-orientation, pressure and belief systems regarding body ideals, time constraints regarding development and nurture of psychological and physical well-being, abusive power relations and adherence to tradition.
Consequently, these stressors affect dancers’ self-esteem and body image, also showing indications to result in perfectionistic tendencies, injuries, demotivation, eating disorders, obsessive passion and inadequate amount of sleep.

Body-image and puberty

Overall, there are strong indications that there is a higher drive for thinness, self-objectification, and negative self-image in ballet. Contemporary dance, on the other hand, has been repeatedly highlighted for individuals to develop healthier relationships with their bodies. Thus, the type of dance genre but also the length and time engaged in a particular dance environment as well as the dancer’s age and intensity of the classes might have an impact on dancer’s sense of self and body image.
Therefore, dancers may experience conflict and struggle between normal pubertal change and well-established body ideals in ballet traditions and practices especially. Because the ballet environment prefers late maturation during puberty (Mitchell et al.; 2020), dancers face different challenges, depending on their individual maturation. Late maturing dancers have little time to adapt and adjust to physical and psychological development. Consequently, they experience implications related to interactions with their peers, their identity as teenagers and anxiety about the outcome of their physical development (Mitchell et al., 2020; Mitchell et al., 2021). Having spent less time in childhood, dancers who mature early are often less prepared to deal with pubertal challenges. They tend to have a higher dropout risk and are more vulnerable to psychosocial issues related to low self-esteem, body dissatisfaction and disordered eating (Mitchell et al., 2020; Mitchell et al., 2021).

Appraisals

Threat

Body ideals in the dance world
Media and social media portraying body ideals in dance and in society
Others’ perception of one’s body
Competition
Close relationships and sexual identity in the dance environment
Financial insecurity
Career insecurity (retirement, promotions…)
Puberty (early and late maturation) vs. set body ideals

Challenge

Career transitions
Skill development
Self-actualization
Autonomy
Creativity

Benefit

Goal-orientation

Personal qualities

Proactivity
Harmonious Passion
Confidence
Motivation
Relatedness
Optimism

Overview over responses to Cultural Stressors

Facilitative responses

Training psychological skills such as goal setting, focus and valuing individuality
evaluate negative experiences and their impact on perceived ability, self-esteem and motivation
appropriate use of social support
Showing signs of self-acceptance
Developing positive relationship with others
Application of emotion-focused coping strategies and making honest stress appraisal

Debilitative responses

Conforming to fit into a given norm (physically and mentally)
Pushing through injuries and pain
Seeing negative experiences as failures
Display of obsessive passion
Disrupted or inadequate sleep & rest
Overtraining

General overview over responses to cultural stressors

Resilience seems to be a pre-requisite to manage rejection and other adversities in the ballet world (Pickard, 2013). However, how a dancer handles the multiple stressors in the dance environment is just as essential as the physical and mental skills demanded within the dance culture (Kveton-Bohnert, 2017). That means that the more in-the-moment and task-oriented one can remain during an event, the less likely anxieties will interfere with performance (Kveton-Bohnert, 2017).
Therefore, studies suggest making dance students aware of the real-life world of work. Sometimes this is done by incorporating career management, self-management and small business skills. This can offer the students the chance to develop their individual strengths and interests that will empower them to create sustainable careers. However, psychological skills, such as goal setting, focus, simulation training and valuing individuality do not develop naturally and dancers can’t develop to their full potential without training these skills (Redding & Quested, 2006; Carratini, 2020; Klockare et al., 2011). Screenings, for example, can become a useful tool to identify mental health issues and aid the implementation of the above-mentioned psychological skills training in dancer’s schedules (Redding & Quested, 2006). Implementing psychological skill training and encouraging critical thinking, questioning authority, gaining perspective, and discussing how to cope with rejection will thus equip dancers for survival and success in a culture that might perceive physical characteristics as less ideal (Mitchell et al., 2021; Klockare et al., 2011; Carratini, 2020; Redding & Quested, 2006).

However, negative experiences can also lead to a process of sophisticated reflection, readjustment, and the opportunity to refocus if the dancer could evaluate its impact on their perceived ability, self-esteem and motivation (Pickard & Bailey, 2009). Helpful adversity coping skills and strategies in these situations entail making appropriate use of social support, such as staying around positive friends and mentors, applying emotion-focused coping strategies, and making honest stress appraisals as well as realistic assessments of the expectations of others, travel demands, and injuries (Kveton-Bohnert, 2017 citing Harmison, 2006). Thus, resilience characteristics such as environmental mastery, personal growth, and optimism, establishing meaning and purpose, autonomy, positive relations with others, and self acceptance seem to be an essential key for dancers to endure the rigors of training (Kveton Bohnert, 2017; Senning, 2020).

Cultural stressors:

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