September 2016 | Smart Cycles

At the University at Buffalo, where I teach, the dance and athletic departments stand side by side. I often cite this architectural relationship as a metaphor for the two sides of a dancer—one part artist and one part athlete.The benefits to dancers of aerobic exercise, weight training, and cross-training are common knowledge. Less widely understood is what dance teachers can learn and integrate into their work from the field of athletics, specifically the concept of periodization, which I