Dr Sue Mayes am

Role: Director of Artistic Health, Principal Physiotherapist and Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe University Company tenure: 26 years

Where are you based?

My primary residence is the Artistic Health hub at the Ballet Centre in Melbourne, but I travel with the dancers around Australia and internationally.

What does your job involve?

My day begins on my drive in, where I start to collect my thoughts and prepare for what’s ahead. As soon as I arrive at work, the Artistic Health team has a 15-minute meeting where we plan our day. We’re all super-busy for the one hour before class. It’s our time to check on injuries that the dancers might be carrying, or to assess or advise on little niggles – suggesting modifications for the dancers to take into class and rehearsals.

While everyone’s busy in class, we’ll work with the few injured dancers who can’t join class and catch up on our administration. I spend the rest of my day working handson with the dancers, helping to relieve fatigued muscles, mobilising stiff joints and designing exercise programs.

It’s really important that we don’t just concentrate on the dancers’ physical health; we also support with their mental health and wellbeing and set up additional support from our Performance and Lifestyle Advisor if required. We also meet weekly with the Artistic Director and Artistic team to discuss the status of injured dancers, so they can accommodate them in rehearsals and performances.

Apart from working directly with the dancers, I also lead our research partnership with La Trobe University and ensure we investigate clinically relevant issues that will improve our dancers’ health and wellbeing.

What do you enjoy most about the work you do?

Aside from working in a positive and supportive environment, I’m working with people who are incredibly motivated to do what they love, which is a real privilege. I enjoy the analytical process of diagnosis and then going through a rehabilitation process. I love seeing the dancers progress every week, and I enjoy making them feel supersupported. To then watch them do amazing things on stage is the icing on the cake.

What are you most proud of from your time working with the company?

When I started, the women were retiring at 30 and the men at 33, due to the physical impact of dancing. Now we have both men and women dancing into their 40s – and they are not retiring due to injury, which is phenomenal.

I have had the opportunity to travel around the globe, sharing our insights with other companies and schools, and the world now knows of the amazing care The Australian Ballet shows our dancers. Our dancers are confident that they have the best possible evidencebased practices to support them, so they can dance for as long as they wish. Through research and education, we help them to become masters of their own bodies.