En Pointe with Scoliosis

Today Dancer Girl got her first pair of pointe shoes.

She is SO excited.

We got the OK from her back doctor first, and have decided to do private lessons over the summer to see if there are any scoliosis-related issues before she takes the official class in the fall.  The director of her dance studio will provide the lessons herself to monitor Dancer Girl's progress and make sure she is ready to go when classes start up again.

At the fitting the person helping us said Dancer Girl has very strong feet. She also tried to give her shoes that will help provide as much stability as possible to aid in keeping her back properly aligned.  She was very helpful, for which I was very grateful.

We are feeling good about this at the moment but are also a little apprehensive. There are differing opinions about the wisdom of pointe for girls with scoliosis.  Some say it does more harm than it is worth, others point out that many dancers with scoliosis do just fine en pointe with no additional damage to their backs.  We will just keep a close eye on things and reassess the wisdom of it should anything seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

There is something very exciting though about watching her stand en pointe for the first time!!  We need to be careful to balance that excitement and thrill with the reality of the scoliosis and make the wise choices as life throws us curves.

(Our side bar has some links to other sites that talk about dancing with scoliosis if you are interested in more information about this topic).