A Dancer’s Journey: Injury, Healing and Launching a Groundbreaking GYROTONIC® Rehabilitation Program for Professional Dancers

Blog Content Interviews // March 05, 2025

Anneli Chasemore is a professionally trained dancer from the English National Ballet School. She had a successful career across Europe but faced a turning point after a severe on-stage injury. Her journey to recovery led her to the GYROTONIC® Method, recommended to her by a forward-thinking orthopedic consultant in Cologne. Anneli’s remarkable recovery through Gyrotonic movement not only restored her physical capabilities but also transformed her approach to dance and injury prevention. She transitioned into teaching and became a strong advocate for the Gyrotonic Method, eventually helping to establish a health department for dancers at the Staatsballett in Berlin, Germany. This initiative provides holistic support (including injury prevention, nutritional advice, and psychological tools) specifically benefiting dancers. Anneli’s work has gained much recognition, making a substantial impact on dance rehabilitation and highlighting the importance of comprehensive, specialized care in maintaining dancers’ health and performance.

 

Dancing & Injury History

I trained as a professional dancer in England, at the English National Ballet School. I discovered the Gyrotonic Method when I was dancing with Scottish Ballet before I got injured. There was already a bit of Gyrotonic exercise going on there, and I tried it one time with a friend. It was kind of a one-off thing. I started training at the age of 11, then went on to be a professional dancer, in the UK, Germany, and Norway. I moved around a fair bit. I had a long dancing career of 19 years, relatively injury-free, except for one very large injury.

I dislocated my elbow whilst performing on stage. I slipped doing a pas de deux. We don’t really know if there was some make up on the floor, but there’s also an awkward corner of the pointe shoe where I slipped, and I was off-balance. It was supposed to be an off-balance movement, but I caught myself on my left arm and it dislocated. I also tore the ligament that goes around the head of the radius, and a chunk of bone was pulled away from the ulna. It was traumatic because it was in the middle of a show, and we couldn’t go on.

My whole treatment right after the injury was, well… it wasn’t dance specific. Nobody really looked at deep diagnostics until I was put in touch with an orthopedic consultant in Cologne, which was very far from where I was. I was in Bavaria at the time, but I went to her, and she recognized immediately the severity of the accident, and the risk of not dancing again. Long story short, I ended up having surgery. All of that was quite difficult, and the recovery process was more difficult.

Your structure of life as a dancer is dictated by your schedule. We try to build a structure with them so they, every day, have a good number of things, but not too many things. Some of them like to overload themselves, which can be detrimental. You must let what they’ve done sit and work. Dancers tend to be very demanding of themselves. It’s all connected to your identity. It’s our livelihood. The body is our instrument, and it’s not like you can replace it easily. There is immediate fear you will lose your role because you must be replaced immediately. The work must continue. That’s hard for most dancers. There’s also the risk of not being able to come back at the level you were at. The stress is incredible.

I was overwhelmed because there was a lot of fear. I’m quite pragmatic. As much as I love my career as a dancer, I’m not going to think too much about going back to stage until I get the range of motion back. If it doesn’t come back, then I will study something else. I was thinking about it quite black and white. I was astounded from being in a place where there were lots of doctors. When I went to Heidelberg, I was operated on by a surgeon that is a specialist in Germany. I had all those complications trying to find the right surgeon to do it. I remember that after the surgery, they were also quite surprised at how long it took for the movement to come back… before I started the Gyrotonic rehabilitation process.

I started with physiotherapy. I wasn’t regaining the movement I really needed. It was so restricted, I was thinking, “Will I actually be able to have the mobility and ease of movement to dance at a high professional level again?” The doctor in Cologne, she was a great fan of Gyrotonic exercise, and very understanding towards dance medicine. She was ahead at the time because now, in Germany, we have different rehab options where Gyrotonic classes are offered to dancers. Back then there weren’t. She said to me, “Can you come to Cologne?” I agreed. She replied, “Okay, come do Gyrotonic classes every day and we’ll see what happens in four weeks.”

 

Utilizing the Gyrotonic Method for Rehabilitation

My first session was remarkable for me. When I teach the first movement with one arm, trying to get extension. The right arm was fine. As I put my left arm on the machine, I was shaking, and the arm would hardly move. It’s distressing for a dancer. I tried 2 or 3 times with the guidance of a trainer and on the fourth go, my arm stretched. It was phenomenal. There must have been a lot of scarring fasciae, all those things, restricting the movement, then suddenly my arm moved. I did Gyrotonic for a month and I felt so good. I’ve never felt like that. I never felt so good as a dancer as I did at the end of those four weeks. It took a while for me to do big lifts and to not be so frightened of my body. All the other things I had, like patellar tendonitis, disappeared because my body realigned. Muscle groups were more balanced. I had learned so much. It was transformative.

I continued with my career and came back to dancing. There wasn’t much Gyrotonic training in the city where I was, so I used to travel over to Berlin, to go to Gyrotonic class at least once a week. I felt like it was important to me as a dancer. Even if it was my only free day, I would go and do it. Then I would bring a little group of friends. We’d all start doing the trip, and my now-husband would come along too. They said to me at one point, “You should think about doing the training, you really absorb it all.” I said, “Okay, I’m still dancing but I’ll start.” They told me, “You must do the foundation course if you can, in Münstertal, because you’ll love it!”

That’s what happened. I did the amazing foundation course. It was intense, but I had such a good time. Then I did my apprenticeship and my certification. I continued dancing and slowly teaching people at the opera house (singers, dancers, and musicians too). Then I was fully licensed to teach. I really wanted to support dancers. I speak the language. I can ask the questions. I can travel to the various doctors. There are lots of dancers in Germany that don’t speak German and are very young. The psychological stress of being injured was as big as the physical pain, so I was like, “I need to do something!” I knew with the Gyrotonic Method, I can do it, but I also felt like I wanted to study, and I wanted to go to university. So, I followed up with a Master’s Degree in Dance Science, which gave me a background in the whole performance enhancement side of things. Where sports science caters for the athletes, we cater for the needs of the dancers. I also did a pedagogical teaching diploma for dance.

Then, my journey kind of changed. We were getting married, and I knew we were going to be based in Germany. Although it has so many dancers, I felt like the needs were not being addressed for them. So, how am I going to do this in Germany? And then one thing led to another.

 

Founding the Dancer’s Health Department

I was asked to be a mentor for a dancer from the Staatsballett Berlin, Germany’s biggest ballet company. It has almost 90 dancers. It has a huge repertoire between classical and contemporary pieces. You name it, Balanchine to Forsythe, everything. I was mentoring a dancer who was doing a teaching diploma. She was looking at coaching and the effect of coaching on dancers’ progression in their careers. She said to me, “I’ve spoken about you to the directorship because I think we need to have health support, like a dancers’ health department. We think you’re the right person to establish it.”

Together with Soraya Bruno, my colleague, we founded the Health Department at the Staatsballett. Soraya has a close relationship to us. We look at each case individually, and we talk to the dancer. If it’s somebody who has never taken Gyrotonic classes, we recommend it. They get two to three 90-minute sessions, two to three times a week. Soraya is also responsible for other dancers in the city. Berlin has a legendary revue theater, The k, where the dancers do everything from pointe shoes and high heels to acrobatics. They have seven shows a week! She’s also supporting them.

As a team, we started small in 2016 (with a limited number of hours a week) working with dancers in all areas of performance enhancement and injury prevention. We have a great team of doctors. We have a great team of physiotherapists. One of the first things we established was a good network of team-players. The most important key partner is the famous hospital here in Berlin, Charité. They have a sport medicine department.

There’s a lot of more specialized doctors thinking a bit more holistically. However, in the rehab sense, the work we are doing is an example of how to look at it more holistically. In Germany there’s a lot of awareness now in the sense of the issues, which kind of injuries are we seeing? There’s a huge study we were involved in along with five or six major ballet companies over a two-year period. They tracked injuries, but also the dancers did weekly monitoring where they tracked data. How many days did I dance with pain this week? How am I doing with that? How is my sleep quality? The data coming out of is not different from the data from research that was carried out earlier. It doesn’t look like things have changed in the way that things are getting significantly better (i.e., injury rates are not dropping).

Over the years, we’ve developed things, and we take care of dancers who notice they’ve got a little bit of pain, or some imbalance. They ask us to watch them in class to give them feedback, to look at the alignment, to give them special programs to support them. When they do get injured, they receive a lot of support. They also receive support on other things like nutritional advice, coaching for dancers, and psychological tools. The rehabilitation side has evolved immensely.

Germany has a special system, an insurance system, that when you’re employed, you have work insurance. So, when you have an accident at work (it must fall into certain categories) the accident insurance then normally pays for your treatment. If they are insured, or if their employer is insured by the accident insurance of Berlin (which any major institution will be), it will get support with our health department. The general umbrella for those is Die Berufsgenossenschaft. It’s a society that supports the professions. Previously, you would get your surgery paid for and you’d get your physio paid for. You might, if you’re lucky, be sent to some rehabilitation center where you would do ergotherapy, hydrotherapy, and conditioning, but it wouldn’t be specific to the needs of a dancer.

Over the years, Unfallkasse Berlin has been pivotal to all our developments. There’s a lady there, her name is Nicole Bauer, who’s been very forward-thinking. Ten years ago, she presented Gyrotonic exercises as a form of rehabilitation for dancers. She was already sending some dancers in Berlin to Gyrotonic studios. Once we had the dancers’ health department, we started to develop a much closer relationship with her. We receive contact at least once a week. We speak about the specific needs of those dancers that have had an accident and are in their rehab. They receive guidance from step one.

For example, we have a dancer who had a cruciate ligament injury. Nicole is so forward thinking she would say, “Okay, he’s injured his knee. His surgery is going to happen in so many weeks. What can we do to keep the rest of his body and psyche up?” Then she’ll say, “Okay… Gyrotonic method! Leave the knee out, don’t do anything that’s going to stress it.” Of course, there’s always a doctor involved, who’s also authorizing Gyrotonic sessions. The whole thing accelerated the last two years. With Nicole Bauer already supporting Gyrotonic sessions, I didn’t need to convince her. She was already convinced before she met me. So that made life easier.

If we see somebody who needs a sports psychologist to help them through the trauma and stress of the possibility of not coming back. It’s important to have an open mind, and to look at the whole picture. The first period, they’re always a bit shocked. Then, they want to get the diagnostics done, know what they’ve got, and deal with the surgery. They start to feel supported. You go through the ups and downs with them as you take them towards the end. Then you’re going on the Jumping Stretching Board, you start to add some of the dancer’s work so they can transition to ballet class smoothly. They can’t go into the studio until they can do all those things in a non-studio setting. The use of the cables, for example, connecting the port de bras, finding the scapula, finding the seed center, it’s all a huge part of it. There are a lot of dancers who dance fantastically but are not aware of those things. You come back a much better dancer if you can transfer Gyrotonic lessons into your dancing.

The Asta Hamburger Tanz medicine symposium in Hamburg was set up by Dr. Anja Hauschild, who is one of the passionate, dance specialists in Germany. There’s a whole dance medicine society here, and she’s behind it (she’s also the one who set up the study with different ballet companies). There were speakers, all talking about dance, injuries, and rehabilitation. The dance rehabilitation center in Gelsenkirchen called Medicos was there speaking about their use of the Gyrotonic Method. We were there, speaking about dancer rehabilitation and how we’ve managed to get all these things supported.

We have tailor-made support for the dancers that’s very dance specific. We introduced exactly how it works, the different people on board throughout their rehab, and that it was being used/supported. People were very excited. I showed a couple of videos of dancers I’ve been working with. That was Nicole Bauer’s wish. She felt it was important to see movements. She said, “It’s quite obvious when you see it, why it’s so beneficial.”

 

Dance Specific Rehabilitation

I have my own studio, and I have a range of clients: non-dancers, people with scoliosis, leg length differences, all sorts of things, all walks of life… like most studios. I have two other trainers supporting me at the studio. With all clients, you must brief them, you must reflect on the progress of the clients. We’re seeing them a lot. There’s a lot of updating going on and communication between us with the doctors or with the other team-players. What impressions do the physios have? What impression does the doctor have?

It does help to have a health department, and in Germany, we’re the only ballet company with a health department. You need the middle person to communicate the language to really understand their needs. I’m happy dancers can have that kind of support because I see the results. At the moment, we have two cruciate ligaments, a dislocated shoulder, and a gymnast with same injury as me (dislocated elbow). She’s an aerial gymnast and she’s made it back. She’s working again! We’ve had a freelance dancer being supported with a ruptured achilles tendon. We’ve had a dancer who had fallen down the stairs in the car park, with the ice in the winter, and had nasty back pain.

Things have taken place in a way that has been so fruitful. The Gyrotonic Method for dancers’ rehab is so beneficial. It feels like such a relief that it’s being recognized. It puts the Gyrotonic Method in the place where it should be. As a dancer, we have the whole body. It’s more than just rehabbing from the injury. I can move. I have the range of motion. Doctors are asking me to do, and I can do, but am I ready to transition back to class? There’s a return to sport, return to game, and a return to competition. We have a return to class and a return to the stage. Returning to class and the stage is one of the most complex bits because it’s long. They get used to standing and moving in a way they’re familiar with, resetting the body, getting over the anxieties, and they have somebody giving them a lot of attention.

We have normally two ballet classes at a time, about 45 dancers in each class. It’s very stressful if you’re coming back from an injury. Everybody’s moving fast. It doesn’t matter how skilled the ballet masters are, they cannot give individual coaching with that number of people. So, the company now has a third class, a rehabilitative class, and it’s set to the needs of the dancers who are slowly transitioning back. There’s an information exchange going on there. We watch the class to observe and support them. They come back to the studio to take Gyrotonic classes, and then you can say, “Let’s work on this.”

The interesting thing is, everybody who’s gone down the Gyrotonic journey path can sing songs of this, but you watch them initially coming in for the injury and being focused on the injury. As they progress you start to address all the areas of the body, and they start to see the alignment, and other weak spots they hadn’t addressed. Gyrotonic exercises changes them a lot. It makes a big difference. It’s the way the Gyrotonic method works. It’s not forceful. They can work deeply, and they can feel strong, but they’re also nourished.

It’s the fact that it’s not local, it’s embedded in the movement. You are opening the joint in the sense that, with physio, I was doing very isolated movements. I was doing supination and pronation, and flexion and extension. With Gyrotonic class, I wasn’t forcing anything. I was gently stretching the joint with the breath, supporting my whole body with a context that even though the method was completely new to me, it felt familiar. I had to place myself. I had to think about my whole body. I had to reflect on what I was doing. I think that’s what made the difference.

 

Take a look at some other inspiring stories from our community:

Awareness and Imagination: The GYROKINESIS® Method from a Wheelchair

Running Reimagined: GYROTONIC® Techniques for Endurance and Agility

Training and Teaching with Physical Limitations

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