Photo By Matt Borgerding

Spectrum Rehab at The Christ Hospital in Mount Auburn specialize in repairing the damage that dancers and other performers do to their bodies.

Sophie Haines has broken her foot. She's 12; it happens. But Sophie's a ballerina who will be in the seventh grade at the School for Creative and Performing Arts this fall, and she fractured her metatarsal while going up in pointe shoes. A foot injury means a lot more to her than having to stay out of the pool for a few weeks.

Lucky for Sophie her mother is good friends with Jacqui Haas, dance medicine coordinator at the Performing Arts Medicine program, part of Spectrum Rehab at The Christ Hospital. After having her foot iced and taped, Sophie rested on a training table in the clinic while Haas prepared for a Friday afternoon Pilates class. This suite in The Christ Hospital Medical Office Building in Mount Auburn is the center of dance medicine in Cincinnati. Here, Haas and her staff evaluate dancers before they can join the Cincinnati Ballet, help current performers with injuries and injury prevention and decide which 10-to-12 year olds are ready to go up on pointe. Blonde and petite, sporting vintage gold earrings and stretchy dancewear, Haas was a professional dancer before she received her athletic training certification from the University of Cincinnati.

"I retired from the Cincinnati Ballet in 1988, and then I was hired in 1989 by the Wellington Orthopedic Group to be the liaison between the Ballet and their group," she said. When the group was purchased by The Christ Hospital, Haas helped create the program.

At the center of the clinic are its three therapists and trainers: Haas, Alicia Zabala and Jill Vonderhaar. Haas and Zabala are athletic trainers, Vonderhaar is a physical therapist; all three are Pilates instructors. Haas asked both Zabala and Vonderhaar to join her in the program, which moved into its current location three years ago.

Now it's a flourishing rehab center and Pilates studio where training tables share space with Pilates equipment and dance posters decorate the walls. Avril Lavigne plays in the background as dancers are put through circuit training by Haas and Zabala.

At the core of the clinic's work is its relationship with the Cincinnati Ballet. During the season, the clinic sends someone to rehearsals or performances for three hours a day, five days a week. Having constant access and a close relationship to a clinic that specializes in treating dancers isn't something most ballet companies enjoy, according to Cincinnati Ballet company manager Tina Borgemenke. It's a perk she credits with helping keep the company's retention rate near 100 percent in recent years. Part of their tangible value to the Ballet lies in reducing trips to the emergency room -- and the accompanying Workers Comp claims.

"If Jacqui or Alicia can take a look at them and say, 'We don't need to worry about anything yet, it's just a little bit of a strain,' that saves the company a lot of money on Workers Comp," she explains, "because if they automatically go to the hospital, it mounts up on the claims," she said.

In addition, says Borgemenke, an ongoing relationship with the clinic maintains continuity of care for the dancers throughout the season. Haas and Zabala know at any time the particular issues for any dancer, and they are aware of problems that might pop up later in the season. And, she adds, it helps protect the company when dancers new to the Ballet are evaluated.

"The last thing we want as a company is for a dancer to come in injured, and we don't know about it," she said. "We had that one year where a dancer came back injured, but it was able to be diagnosed before it became an issue for us."

The program has honed its approach to deal with people who have very different needs from the average rehab patient. Vonderhaar compares dancers to runners or swimmers, athletes who perform the same movements over and over again. While a football or basketball player is likely to suffer an acute injury from one traumatic collision, a dancer is more susceptible to a repetitive motion disorder. Vonderhaar does the actual manual therapy with the dancers, something she says is "like chiropracty, but more gentle."

Dancers don't need the same kind of rehab required by an athlete -- professional or recreational. They use a far greater range of motion in their joints and muscles, and what they need are the precise, guided movements of Pilates.

"For a normal, average person, there's a certain range of motion that you need. But a dancer has to go above and beyond that," says Zabala. "Pilates rehab works for them because they're allowed to do more of their normal, functional exercises."

Watching some of the exercises Zabala puts patients through, it's abundantly clear that "normal, average person" physical therapy won't come close to working the muscles these young women use. One in particular practiced such tightly controlled movements, rotating one leg at a time in a strap, an observer's abdominal muscles hurt in sympathy.

As for Sophie, she made another appointment with Haas to find out what her prognosis would be before beginning classes at SCPA in late August.

"I did a performance two days after we talked," she says. "It hurt to dance on it, but I don't think it hurt it anymore. I've been doing exercises to help heal it. It's actually fully recovered now. It hardly hurts at all." ©