The Psychological Effects of Ballet and Contemporary Dance on Female Dancers: An Embodiment Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
:This comparative study explores the psychological effects of classical ballet and contemporary dance on female dancers, drawing on embodiment theory to explore how movement, aesthetic ideology, and training environments shape female dancers body image, self-esteem, and overall mental well-being. While dance is widely recognized for its psychological benefits, existing literature often treats it as a monolithic practice, overlooking the genre-specific pressures and affordances that influence dancers well-being. Through an in-depth theoretical and empirical analysis, this study examines the differential impact of classical ballet and contemporary dance on dancers psychological well-being. Ballets codified aesthetic ideals, hierarchical pedagogical structures, and culture of perfectionism have been linked to increased risk of body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, conditional self-worth, and psychological distress, particularly in relation to injury and identity development. In contrast, contemporary dance, characterized by its emphasis on individuality, somatic awareness, and expressive authenticity, appears to support greater psychological flexibility, body acceptance, and emotional resilience. Injuries are common in both styles but are processed differently: ballet injuries often disrupt identity and lead to emotional withdrawal, while contemporary dancers approach recovery as embodied adaptation. Contemporary dance supports more adaptive coping strategies through its emphasis on improvisation, collaboration, and personal agency, while ballets rigid structure, perfectionism, and limited emotional autonomy often result in less flexible coping mechanisms. This study not only addresses a significant gap in the literature but also offers practical insights for educators, psychologists, and dance institutions aiming to understand and support female dancers mental well-being.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".