What is Dance Medicine?
Medicine is the science and art of preventing and alleviating or curing disease. Dance medicine and science is the application of these principles to the specific life and body of the dancer. As a discipline it investigates the causes of dance injuries, promotes their care, prevention and safe post-rehabilitation return to dance, and explores the “how” of dance movement.

(Definition of Dance Medicine and Science provided by the International Association of Dance Medicine and
Science www.iadms.org ).

What we do:
We provide dance-specific physical therapy services to professional and pre-professional dancers and dance students in the greater Nashville area. We treat a wide range of issues including overuse and chronic injuries, acute injuries, and post-operative rehabilitation. We provide dance medicine education and injury prevention to community dance students, teachers, and parents. We also take care of performers visiting Nashville on tour.

Our goal:
Our goal is to educate each dancer about his/her body in order to encourage dancing safer, smarter, and without
pain.

Who can benefit from Dance Medicine?
Dancers of any type – musical theatre, tap, ballet, contemporary, ballroom, Irish step dance, hip hop, aerial. Our dance medicine experts will tailor their treatment plan to address your specific performance needs and goals.

Our experience:
Our dance medicine experts have diverse performing backgrounds themselves and have studied with intuitions such as the Harkness Center for Dance Medicine, the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science, and Westside Dance PT at NYU in New York City. We work with performing artists of all disciplines including actors and musicians.

Lindsay Ison
Christi Rose
Elizabeth Tilstra


“Nashville Ballet has been so fortunate to develop a strong partnership with Susan Underwood Physical Therapy. They treat our professional dancers with compassion, excellent care, professionalism and exceptional knowledge of dance related injuries. For the young students training at the School of Nashville Ballet, we know we can recommend Susan Underwood Physical Therapy for the best care. There is a certain peace of mind being able to send the children in our school to a place we trust and where we know they pay attention to the individual as well as the injury, in order to get them well and back to achieving their goals”

Sharyn Mahoney
Company Manager
For Nashville Ballet