Injury and the arts: planning for pain

Sooner or later, dancers and circus artists will hurt themselves. But what is the cost when the show goes on despite broken bones or overuse injuries?
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Promotional image for the Casus production Knee Deep.

The simple act of trying and failing to turn a door knob was the first real indication for Casus Circus co-founder and ensemble member Emma Serjeant that a recent wrist injury she’d suffered was more serious than she’d realised.

‘I was taking a high level of anti-inflammatories, and I was training on it all the time because I didn’t really get much of a break, and because I was noticing that if I had a day off it was incredibly sore the next day; so I just kept it mobile, basically … At no point did I think “Oh, this is not good.” I just thought it was a sprain, and I know that [sprained] wrists and fingers take ages. And we were in a pretty gruelling schedule so I didn’t give it a second thought until that door-handle moment when I went “Hang on a minute, something’s really not right”,’ she told ArtsHub.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts