1. Reducing Injury and Increasing Education with Royal Ballet Physiotherapist, Moira McCormack

Episodes have been transcribed to improve the accessibility of this information. Our best attempts have been made to ensure accuracy,  however, if you discover a possible error please notify us at info@bendybodies.org

00:00:00

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Welcome to Bendy Bodies with the hypermobility MD. This is your host, Dr. Linda Bluestein, former ballet  dancer, board certified anesthesiologist, specialist in treating hyper-mobility disorders, and medical director at  Wisconsin integrative pain specialist. Today, Jennifer Milner joins me as a guest cohost. Jennifer is a certified  Pilates trainer specializing in dancers and post-injury recoveries. Our guest today for this inaugural episode of  Bendy Bodies is Moira McCormick, physiotherapist for the Royal Ballet in London. Moira has been working  for many years as a dance specialist, physiotherapist with all age groups, and now works part-time to allow PhD  studies at University College London. Her interests are hypermobility in dance, classical ballet technique, and  reducing the risk of injury in the profession. She has also worked in musical theater and contemporary dance,  appreciating all dance genres. Moira was trained at the Royal Ballet School, graduating to the Royal Ballet  Company. After a dance career, including National Ballet of Canada and London Festival Ballet, she completed  teacher training in classical ballet, working internationally before embarking on a physiotherapy career. Moira  lectures for the Masters in Science program in Sports Medicine, and Masters in Science program in Performing  Arts Medicine at UCLA.  

00:01:32 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Hello and welcome to Bendy Bodies.  

00:01:34 

Moira McCormack 

Hello Linda and Hello Jennifer. Hello thank you so much for coming on today.  

00:01:39 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

We are so excited to chat with you and would love to hear first more about your background. What brought you  to where you are today? 

00:01:48

Moira McCormack 

Well, after that career in dance and, finally getting to physiotherapy and finally starting to understand how  bodies worked and dancers' bodies worked. I worked with very young dancers. I worked with adolescents, and  then. finally with professional dancers. And observing over the years, I started to see a pattern and as  physiotherapists, we're always trying to reduce injury. We're trying to prevent injury. We're trying to educate  artistic managements. We're trying to educate teachers. I just started to see this very clear pattern and decided  that we needed to know more about it. And then. I just started to see this very clear pattern and decided that we  needed to know more about it. I'm not hypermobile myself and a lot of people get interested in this body type  and this physique because they suffered themselves. And that's definitely not me. It was just observing and  trying to understand the really flexible physiques in front of me and the types of injuries they were suffering  from.  

00:03:21 

Moira McCormack 

And that's why I've ended up here with this particular interest. Also, I love watching dance and I love watching  classical ballet dancers doing what they love to do, and also find it very emotional when they fail. Also, I love  watching dance and I love watching classical ballet dancers doing what they love to do, and also find it very  emotional when they fail. And it was from that basis that I find myself here today with my particular interests.  Excellent.  

00:03:51 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Alright, excellent. Specifically, your work with the Royal Ballet, are you able to just fill us in a little bit more  about your role there? They also have a program that starts children at seven years old, and it's a part-time  program that brings these children up to a level where they could be chosen to go into the vocational school.  

00:04:23 

Moira McCormack 

Well, I've worked in the Lower School of the Royal Ballet School where the children start at 11 years old. They  also have a program that starts children at seven years old, and it's a part-time program that brings these children  up to a level where they could be chosen to go into the vocational school.And then I've worked with the  adolescents up to 17, 18, and the huge push that it takes to get these 18 year olds out into professional jobs to get  them up to that standard, and t. o get them into Festival, of course, the Royal Ballet company, and then out all  over the world. I've, I see the hoops that they have to jump through and the stresses physical stresses and the  psychological stresses, something that, I find fascinating still. So I see the hoops that they have to jump through,  and the stresses, physical stresses and the psychological stresses, and it's something that, I find fascinating still.  So that breadth of experience certainly makes me appreciate what it takes to make it in the profession.  

00:05:11 

Jennifer Milner 

Moira, if I could ask a question to follow on that. It's so interesting to me that you were working from the  bottom up, starting with the younger students and then moving up and then moving up. So many companies will  start at the top down, and it's a trickle down effect as to the professionals will get the care, but it's been only  when in the past, well, five to 10 years at the most that the students have been getting the attention and the  preventative training. So. I'm wondering, did you choose that? Were you interested in starting at the bottom  trying to catch it before they were injured or, is that where they put you and you fell in love with that? How did  that happen?  

00:05:59 

Moira McCormack 

I think I most enjoy working with the adolescents, the dancers, the young dancers who are growing madly. I  really liked that age group. I think I fell into it actually, because I was working in a clinic in London was one of  the first dance medicine clinics. So all sorts of dancers came to see you from the vocational, the professionals,  and the amateur dancers, of all sorts. I must admit, I was most interested at that time in the young dancer, the  dancer in training, because I was interested in the basic training that the children get, to give them that first step  up into the vocational schools, and how important that first training is, informing those movement patterns,  making that dancer understand what technique is. It was really the, from the training point of view, I was  interested as working with young dancers as a physiotherapist, because I felt that the training, the alignment, the biomechanics went hand in hand with treating stresses and strains, physical stresses and strains, and injuries, and  trying to suss out, exactly what has caused this injury. So often in the young dancer, it is technique or deficits in  technique, and a technique that requires correction. That makes a lot of sense.  

00:07:45 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Thank you, definitely. We already talked about this but could you go into just more detail in terms of your  research and joint hypermobility and what really moved you to actually pursue research in that?  

00:08:01 

Moira McCormack 

Well, the questions in my mind, and then I remember going to a meeting where, professor Rodney Graham was  giving a talk on a certain, subject to do with hypermobility, and he used to hold these hypermobility clubs. He  called it. All sorts of professionals go along about every six weeks and go to the hypermobility club. Professor  Graham would have an interesting subject to do with that always to do with hypermobility, but everyone would  listen to her presentation, ask questions and consider whether they can take anything from that presentation back  to their own work. He was the one who, really got me interested. I did remind him that as I was, when I was a  student, I had done a ward round with him at a small hospital, somewhere in Southeast London. He had been  very caring and interested in the fact that I had been a ballet dancer.  

00:09:08 

Moira McCormack 

We got together later much later on. Of course I discovered he'd done a, a good study, at the Royal ballet school  in the early seventies. He was so interested in dance and dancers, and I then suggested to him, why don't we do  that again? the dancers in the Royal ballet school, but more than that, let's look at the lower school and let's look  at the professional company and let's put the whole picture together. That's what led to, the paper that we did  together with, Dr. Alan Hakim and, Janet Briggs, who was also a physiotherapist, still a physiotherapist at white  lodge, the lower school. We got, we all got together and we, did the research and came up with, that, prevalence  of hypermobility and benign joint hypermobility syndrome, in, this particular organization.  

00:10:23 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Okay. We're going to go into some more details about those, studies in just and that was just such fabulous work  that you did. I'm really excited to hear more about that. Can you tell me what you feel are the factors that are  most influential and the dancer regarding joint hypermobility and also joint instability? for example, the severity  of, how significant is that the degree to which someone has, joint hypermobility, or which joints are unsafe,  hypermobile or unstable, or whether or not they have other symptoms, which, what things do you think are most  influential?  

00:11:06 

Moira McCormack 

Well, because of where I work, I'm not really going to see any of those seriously. Ehlers-Danlos type,  hypermobility type dancers. I know that we, in the company, we have some dancers who are verging towards  that, but at the school, when they do their auditions, they will probably be, deselecting anyone with, a real  hyper-mobility disorder. They'll it will become apparent, I think in movement patterns when the dancer does  their first audition, and then when they go through the physiotherapy assessment, it will be picked up. And then  there will be question marks. What we probably wouldn't be seeing the really severely hyper mobile children,  and they weren't make it up the ladder into the upper school and into the company because, usually it's, an injury  situation that will eventually, I hate the phrase, weeding them out, but I'm afraid that is what happens. It  becomes too difficult when, a young dancer has injury after injury.  

00:12:24 

Moira McCormack 

It really becomes how much of a challenge that they opt out. They tend to opt out themselves when we've got, I  mean, we will still have our, hyper Boba really hyper mobile dancers will have other qualities that are selected  by the school. The aesthetic qualities of their movement and their proportions, their face, the beauty, they all of  that will get them into a school. As physiotherapists, we will be aware of this particular, vulnerability and those  

dancers. Fortunately now I can say we have the ways and means to protect them, to strengthen them, to give  them more control, to monitor them very carefully, and allow them to survive. So we can do that. It's, it also, becomes apparent as the workload goes up, the challenges become more, it's not just dancing half a day, which  you do from 11 to 15. It becomes dancing for a whole day, after that.  

00:13:48 

Moira McCormack 

Those stresses and strains will often guide the dancer, whether they're going to make it or not, and guide the  school, whether they should allow the dancer to progress to the upper school, progressing from school to  company is completely, the artistic management of the company. It's their business to select from the school  who they want to come into the company. We don't, we would never interfere with any of that, because the very  flexible dancers, the more high, the really hypermobile types will make great dancers. If they are looked after, if  they are educated, they survive. Yes. To go back to your point about the range of movement, Linda, you said the  range of movement and the severity of the joint hypermobility. Well if we have a huge range of movement,  passive range of movement, where those legs go all over the place that the spine extends fantastically, that's  great.  

00:15:04 

Moira McCormack 

As long as there is control, right? So if your passive range is massive in your hip, doing a grand battement  davon, but the strength to hold a developee is far less than that. We know that there's a huge deficit there in  control and strengths. That is what as a dancer and as your healthcare team, around you will be working on, to  make that deficit smaller and smaller. That deficit pay is controlled practically through your whole range. That's  a tall order, but that is what we're, that's what our work is about. The joint instability, when we talk about, well,  if you can do a great ground Battement and the hip goes up freely and with ease and control, that's wonderful. If  that hip also, has a bit of excursion within the hip joint, as it goes up, and we ended up with, an impingement at  the front of the hip, because the articulation of the hip has not been totally controlled.  

00:16:30 

Moira McCormack 

There is a discussion there, and the joint moves. The head of the femur moves, freely slides freely within the  acetabulum. We are going to be in for problem. We have to work very hard on stabilizing that joint decreasing  the amount of instability, the amount of excursion, and only, and now it, to, articulate to allow the range of  movement inflection or in, if we're going on a second to, abduction and reflection and, whichever range of  movement we're talking about that we have to stabilize before the extreme ranges that are used. I'm not sure if I  explained that well, but it's that principle for all of the joints, throughout the body, that there is a deep  stabilization first before great range of movement. Yes.  

00:17:44 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

You explained that very well. It makes, that makes a lot of sense. For any of our listeners who want just a super,  like quick visual about that, I tend to think of Gumby versus raggedy Ann, that, the green Gumby, which some  of our listeners are probably way too young to know what Gumby is. I think of Gumby who, the whole thing  that you can kind of bend them all over the place, but raggedy Ann is just kind of floppy and we don't want that.  That's that's a real concern. I think that, you explained that very well, and that's so important. We'll get more into  this later with social media and the influence that has, because that's a whole lot introduces a whole nother factor  into this, for sure. When you first started researching hypermobility, did you observe that there were more  hypermobile dancers at any particular level, whether it be pre-adolescent or adolescent pre professionals or  professionals?  

00:18:46 

Moira McCormack 

Not really because there was this, they're all, they all have to be hypermobile. All the dancers in a vocational  school, I chosen for their hypermobility. It's that spectrum of hypermobility that, we are concerned about. Every,  vocational school will have a scattering of more extreme, hyper mobiles. You can see them, you walk into a  studio and you can see them, you can pick them out as you watch them work. Same with, the upper school, the  16 to eighteens. You can see them, you see that type of movement, that range of movement, that at that age,  that's slight loss of control, but you think, Oh, there's potential there. That's why they are selected. They see the,  our artistic staff see the flexibility and they immediately think, Oh, there's something more we can get out of  these dancers. In the company, we still see, we see those, dancers that have been selected into the profession, but  the deficit start to become more noticeable because certainly within, a hardworking classical ballet company, the challenges are own the challenges to stamina, robustness, that ability to keep going work long hours, not much  time to recover, and six days a week and evenings as well with performances.  

00:20:31 

Moira McCormack 

That's when the deficits start to become a parent. The dancer tends to, accumulate lots of small injuries. In often  in spite of, being shown, this is what we've got to do. We've got to get all that control. We do our polities and we  do very specific dance centered, polities exercises to get that control. We've got the gym and we have our  trainers who, sought out, a program for you to increase your strength. We still see, our, more flexible dancers  start to fail, unfortunately. We see them all the way through, but as, our, I think our research that we did way  back looking at, how, as you go through the ranks of the company, the, very hyper mobile dancers tend to  become less and less. And in our principal ranks yes. Hardly any.  

00:21:48 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

2004 research article.  

00:21:50 

Moira McCormack 

Yes, yes. Yeah. And I think that holds today.  

00:21:54 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Because what I mean, that's not great, but I, we will have a link to that article so that people can access it. Yes, I  was hoping that you would comment on that excellent article that you published,  

00:22:07 

Moira McCormack 

It's quite old and it has, it's false. I mean, we know that, but it was interesting at the time just to see that pattern.  Of course, every, with everything that we try to do within the company to prevent injury and prolong careers,  still, we will get those dances that fall through the net for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes dances, I find that  hypermobile dancers have to work harder than a lot of the others. They have to be extremely organized. They  have to make sure that they have got their control and their strength, in, woven into the shed jewels every single  week. But it's hard to take holidays. You can't go away for a week and do nothing. Sadly, I think you  deconditioned these, I think hypermobile dumpsters be conditioned faster than a more tightly knit type of  physique. To keep that baseline work, going just baseline and still have a holiday is really important.  

00:23:23 

Moira McCormack 

The recovery is terribly important and dances still find it very difficult to understand how to recover. And I say,  but that's being professional. You've got to push yourself one day and the next day has to, you have to back off a  bit. We have dancers in the company who simply can't jump. Every single day we have male dancers who can't  jump every day. They have to jump hot for one day and then recover the next. I think it's even more important  for the hypermobile dancer because of muscle strengths and what it takes to keep that muscle strength, up high  enough to cope with the challenges of, a week a month, three months in a, a program where they're performing  and rehearsing often many different ballets at the same time.  

00:24:29 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

That that's an excellent point. You're saying that rather than maybe some non hypermobile dancers who can  have the load that maybe would stay fairly consistent from one day to the next. They might even be able to take  a week off and not lose as much ground. The hyper mobile dancers may need to actually have some rest days  from certain activities or decrease the load on certain joints even during the week. Likewise, they also really  would have more trouble if they take a whole week off.  

00:25:02 

Moira McCormack 

Yeah. I think that is our job within a healthcare department is to make them aware of that and to educate them.  It's up to the dancer to take that on board and be very clever about how they organize their week and how they  organize their energy and where they push. When they pull back very hard to, that's very hard to tell any dancer, and get them to really understand that. I think it's even more important with the hypermobile dancer, because I  mean, we see, there is information that tells us that, they fatigue easily. They find it hard to get that stamina up  and keep it up. They find it hard to, strengthen and then keep the strength there. With the right information, the  right support, many do manage it. I learned from them, I watched them and I watch how once they've really  

become very experienced, I watched how they work and how they organize their energies, as I said.  

00:26:14 

Moira McCormack 

That's when we learn from those very clever ones and, I, something I wanted to add, there's not much room for  it's. How do I put it in the respectful way, a lazy dancer, you get some of those really beautifully mobile dancers  that they look gorgeous. The Lexar are all over the place. They find it easy. There's, a temptation to settle back a  bit and rely on how they look and what they can get away with. When the challenges are really on and the  workload goes right up, that's when they fail. There's not much room for, a dancer who isn't willing to, put in the  effort, put in the brain power, thinking things through, and then, the discipline of course, to carry it all out.  

00:27:22 

Jennifer Milner 

Of. I hope all my hypermobile dancers are listening to this because you have just given so much for dancers to  unpack just in the past five minutes about, how they decondition more quickly, about how recovery is harder  about how they have to plan their weeks very specifically and deliberately, and about how you cannot depend on  your naturally beautiful body to carry you throughout your career, that you have got to put in the work and  maintain what you've got. That's there's so much greatness that you just said, thank you so much.  

00:27:58 

Moira McCormack 

Absolutely. You put it in a nutshell there, Jennifer.  

00:28:02 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

That, and that nutshell, I think is, dancers are of course artists, but also athletes. That also holds true for,  especially for people that are hyper mobile, but for other hyper mobile artists, athletes as well. I'm thinking of  other people that I know patients and that, and those exact same, strategies would work for them as well. Yeah.  

00:28:26 

Moira McCormack 

Yes. You can't be an artist and really express unless you have a basis of real stamina and strength, and you're on  top of everything. If you're struggling, you, the artistic side of your performance really goes out the window.  

00:28:48 

Jennifer Milner 

I a hundred percent agree with that. I have worked with, an extremely well-known performer who, came to me  and she was in her, I think sixties, when she and I started working together and I said, what do you want to get  out of these sessions? She was just about to start a new show. She said, I need you to get me to the point where I  don't have to think about it. When I go on stage, I have to get enough strength and enough, biomechanical  correctness in it that when I go out on stage, I can just let it go and perform. That's so true, especially with the  hypermobile dancer, giving themselves that, strengthen that position of strength to move from so that they can  layer the artistry on top of it.  

00:29:33 

Moira McCormack 

Exactly, exactly. That's exactly what, we're on about here? Fabulous.  

00:29:40 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

The, that were just discussing, just very recently here was that you had published in 2004, and then you had also  published a follow-up article in 2009, and that was called joint. The first one was called joint laxity and the  benign joint hypermobility syndrome in student and professional ballet dancers. In that study, you found an 11  fold increase in hypermobility and in dancers in both the ballet school and the professional company. We had  talked about this but also, you also had commented in that article about joint pain, being more common in the  dancers, especially who had other features that at that time we use the phrase benign joint hypermobility syndrome. We've replaced that now, but at that time, that was the, terminology that was being used, especially if  they had stretchy skin and joint dislocations. I'm curious if you believe that still holds true in terms of the joint  pain, in different places of the body being more common in dancers that have these other features, the stretchy  skin and appear to have joint dislocations.  

00:30:44 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

Of course we can't tell for sure without doing imaging, but we can get a pretty good idea of, like you said,  watching them move.  

00:30:51 

Moira McCormack 

Yes. Well dancers often talk about being used to pain and dancing in pain. I do think that pain is just part of the  job. They are often will our dancers at Roberto who have a very high workload. They're often working with a  problem, but then managing it. They know that it's a dodgy ankle that they're looking after, but it's strong  enough and they're maintaining it enough and they're coming for treatment and they're holding it all together.  They're still able to get onstage and fulfill all their work commitments. They do talk about dancers do talk about  working in pain and certain joints or their backs, their spines being painful, but I'm managing it. I know what it  is it's been diagnosed. I know treatment helps. I know what I have to do to make it feel better, and I can get back  on stage with confidence.  

00:31:55 

Moira McCormack 

So they do talk about it. They do also still stuff. I think our dancers still suffer from quite a lot of soft tissue  injuries, especially tendinopathies. It's one of the bunk beds, because once attendance starts to become reactive,  we know that it takes quite a long time. Yes we have it and turn it around and develop the strength and settle  down the tendon and get going again. It has a prolonged healing time. That's what that follow-up paper was  really told us. We've got a lot of tendon problems. At that time, the research into tendinopathy wasn't as  advanced as it is today. Thankfully we do have a good understanding of how to treat, depending on apathy and  try to prevent it. Our approach to a lot of soft tissue injuries now is much more organized, educated, and we can  explain exactly what's going on to the dancer and what the prognosis is.  

00:33:09 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

That's excellent. As somebody who has a lot of tendinopathies myself, I would love to hear if you are able to  elaborate at all on what the newer strategies are that you're using for treating tendinopathies,  

00:33:24 

Moira McCormack 

A lot of it is to do with, developing strength in the muscle that the tendon belongs to. If it's patellar,  tendinopathy, it's, you've got to go for quads. You courts have to be much stronger than dancers. Think they  should be landing from, an entre Lassie or a broncho town tunnel landing, and holding that fondue with your leg  in high, Arabic. I mean, the stresses that go through that tendon, are enormous. Our O female dancers are in the  gym doing single leg squats, double leg squats, and lifting the room, the weight of their own bodies. They're  using a leg press with high load, through the quartz, through the tendon, to prevent if they've had 10 dropsy  before they have a forever on, they have, their own, workout to prevent it coming back again. That is high load  and really good strength. It's also, the use of isometric, exercises before just before, a big rehearsal.  

00:34:49 

Moira McCormack 

You do your isometrics on your quads to just prepare you for that particular, rehearsal. There are, there's some  really good stuff out there that we can use without answers. They take the ball and run with it. It's up to them to  do their preventative work. Of course, that cycle of pain, and then not being able to do your exercises because of  pain and that cycle, that vicious cycle you get into, with tendinopathy, it's getting in the it's trial and error with  every single physique and looking for how you're going to, help each different physique cope with, the stresses  and move through, the tendinopathy to recovery.  

00:35:46 

Jennifer Milner 

It's true that with tendinopathies, it is a, there's no one size fits all and trying to find that unique pathway. I think, just in the past few years, our approach to attend to not Cathy's has changed so much. Acknowledging that, like acknowledging that there isn't really a one size fits all in general, are there interventions that you think are most  important? And I don't even want to say interventions, maybe pre interventions, to help improve the longevity of  a hypermobile dancer's career. You had mentioned at the beginning, Pilates or this or that. What do you think  are some things you have seen useful, over the longterm?  

00:36:29 

Moira McCormack 

Well, over the last, just the last, the recent five years, it's all been strength, but I think, all of us working with,  well, I have been wanting dancers to do loaded strength work 20 years ago because you look at what they do on  stage and you go, control work is always very important, but control work is not going to allow that muscle to  absorb the high East centric loads of landing in, from the very high jump. It's obvious that you need more  strength in the lower limb in dances. It is strengths, but we cannot do without the control. It's strengthened  control, dovetail beautifully together. The gym work and the two go beautifully together. I'm talking about a  professional dancers and the pre-professionals, we're always careful with loading, the younger dancer, the  adolescents who are growing, we have to be very careful and organized in loading.  

00:37:49 

Moira McCormack 

Just as you, if you're getting a, an adolescent to do, to perfect our Grazia day on tour night, and that hold in, our  best then you've got to put those forces in a very controlled way through that body so that they can do the  technical stuff in the studio. Now those two go together, and then of course, it's the stamina work, basic stamina  work, swimming bicycle, cross trainer, all of those things that get the circulation up and get the dancer to exert  themselves over a period of time without fatiguing. That's what we go for with the stamina work and as a  background. It's, it's fairly straightforward, isn't it? what you need to do with the young dancer who is not at a  vocational school, where things are, available and trainers are available there to control exercise regimes, then it  takes more, organization for them to put in those elements as best they can to support their work.  

00:39:11 

Moira McCormack 

Unfortunately, those dancers who are not at vocational schools, but, doing a lot of, serious training, they, I I've  seen it. They lose out, they, you definitely need a good advisor to help you organize your week. You're putting  in, some of those elements, really all of those elements in a, a very balanced way.  

00:39:42 

Jennifer Milner 

Yes. It's not just spending more time in the dance studio that makes you a better dancer. It's being smart with  your time in the dance studio, and then knowing what else you need to get outside of the dance studio, whether  it's swimming or strength training, or control training. This is what you're saying is learning how to put that  whole thing together.  

00:40:02 

Moira McCormack 

Yes, exactly. I mean, even our young dancers in the companies can fail because they've been so enthusiastic.  Usually the men, the young men, so enthusiastic that after class, they really want to practice again and again,  that double tours that revel tots their Monash, and do all of that wonderful stuff that they, because they're young  and they're in the quarter ballet of the company, they don't get to do all of that and stage. They end up wanting  to do all that because it's such fun and they haven't actually put the time into the gym to get that strength. They  come limping in with problems and bone stress, and then you find out, and then they learn, of course, they learn  through those mistakes.  

00:40:57 

Jennifer Milner 

Right? Absolutely. I will say here too, that Royal ballet, and Royal ballet school are absolutely the gold standard  to me, for how to integrate dance science and dance medicine into an institution. The work that you have done,  taking it from your pre-professionals and your middle school and the whole way through, it's been such a  deliberate and thoughtful approach to building a healthier dancer that I think anyone else should be looking at  and trying to emulate. So you guys are. 

00:41:34 

Moira McCormack 

Really the gold standard to my mind, a cog in the wheel, part of it, a team, but it's, it is very heartening to see all  of that coming together.  

00:41:47 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

It's been great. Having everybody here today for bendy bodies, with the hypermobility and feet today, our guest  has been more remote formic physio therapist for the Royal ballet company in London. Please go to bendy  bodies.org for links to more information. We will have links there to where you can get more information about  the different research projects that Moira has done and things for dance teachers, for parents, et cetera, and  dancers themselves. Thank you for listening to this episode because it was so packed full of great content. We  decided to make our discussion with Moira a two part series, and we've come to the end of part one, please be  sure to subscribe to the Bendy Bodies podcast. You'll be notified as soon as we published part two of our  discussion. Thank you. And we'll catch you next time. If you have enjoyed this program, please like share,  subscribe and leave a review.  

00:42:38 

Dr. Linda Bluestein 

This podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice. Please see your own medical team prior to making any changes to your health care bendy. Body's original music is by Andrew  Sevino and sound editing is by Rhett Gill. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we will see you next time on bendy bodies with the hypermobility MD.