What Actually Happens in a Pre Pointe Assessment
Most young ballet dancers who reach the age of about 11 or 12 will progress onto pointe. It is a very exciting stage of a dancer's career and usually comes with much excitement. Perhaps a little more trepidation for teachers and parents. So lets take the mystery out of it. What is actually innvolved in a pre pointe assessment?
Research has found that chronological age alone is a poor indicator of pointe-readiness, because dancers of the same age can be at very different stages of musculoskeletal development and motor control (Richardson, Liederbach & Sandow, 2010). That's part of why the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science (IADMS) recommends pointe work only begin after a proper evaluation of a dancer's physical development, strength, and control — not simply once they've turned a certain age.
Specifically for my clinic, a pre pointe assessment will take 1 full hour. It starts with a conversation, not a test. I want to know your dancer's story — what style of dance they train in, how many hours a week they're dancing, and what sort of niggles or injuries they've had in the past. No two dancers are starting from the same place.
Key areas of attention include;
Posture
Posture is the foundation everything else is built on. We want to see how your dancer naturally holds themselves, before we've asked them to do anything technical at all.
Functional assessment
Your dancer will move through some familiar ballet steps. This is helpful to see technique in motion and will paint a big picture that can identify isolated areas to focus on.
Balance
A dancer's balance tells me a lot about control through the whole body, not just strength in one spot.
Core and abdominal control
This is the stability that holds everything else up — quite literally what lets a turned-out leg stay lifted with control, rather than just getting it there for a second and losing it.
Hip range, muscle length and strength
I will look at muscles surrounding the front, back and side of the hip
Turnout
This is one of the most telling parts of the whole assessment. Since turnout genuinely starts at the hip, I look closely at how much range is available, and whether the muscles around the hips have both the length and the strength to use that range well.
Passive turnout is what's available when I move the leg for your dancer; active turnout is what they can actually control and hold themselves. The gap between the two tells me a lot about where a dancer's turnout is genuinely coming from.
Leg, foot and pointe range
From there we move down to the foot itself — looking at pointe range specifically, along with muscle length and strength around the ankle, since this is what needs to be doing the work once a dancer is up on pointe.
Final comments and suggestions
A final summary is a one word /phrase about each of the individual sections listed above. I will offer an honest opinion on whether your dancer looks pointe-ready, or not quite yet and needs some specific work first. Please remember it is not a pass or fail: it's simply where things are at right now, with a plan for what would help — because every dancer's body gets there on its own timeline. It can be helpful to refer a dancer some months prior to the expected progression to pointe, particularly if you feel there may be issues to work through.
The assessment itself is very full , and I'm always happy to answer questions as we go along. Afterwards, I put together a detailed written report, which goes to both the dance teacher and the parent, so everyone involved in supporting your dancer is looking at the same information. The progression onto pointe is determined by a combined assessment of the dancer’s maturity, technical ability and physiotherapy assessment, hence parents, teachers and physios work together to determine the best path forward for the dancer.
I've spent years around dance, both as a dancer myself and now as the physio, and this is genuinely one of my favourite parts of the job — getting a proper, honest picture of a dancer's body, so they can keep doing what they love, safely and well.
Reference: Richardson, M., Liederbach, M., & Sandow, E. (2010). Functional criteria for assessing pointe-readiness. Journal of Dance Medicine & Science, 14(3), 82–88.
---