AAHC: A Conversation with The Founder, Melissa Buffer
This month, we conducted an interview with the Artistic Athlete Health Collective Founder, Melissa Buffer. The marketing team, along with Libby Bullinger, a Boston-based choreographer, dance educator and AAHC team member, asked Melissa about the inspiration behind The Collective, what impact she hopes it has on the Boston performing arts community and what she envisions for the future of The Collective. You can watch the interview here or read about it below.
🎥 AAHC: A Conversation with The Founder, Melissa Buffer 🎥
The Artistic Athlete Health Collective is a group of interdisciplinary health professionals in the performing arts medicine world with the uniform goal of bringing prevention and wellness directly to where artistic athletes train and perform.
When Melissa was asked to provide the inspiration behind the collective, she said “well, it was sort of like the perfect storm, frankly. The inspiration came after many, many years of working in a clinic, one-on-one with clients, dancers, circus artists and actors and also spending many hours over my long career working backstage in pretty much every theater in Boston. It has become more and more clear to me that artistic athletes need preventative and wellness services in a far more robust and regular way…and that is just now how it is viewed in the performing arts and my mission with this collective is to change that.”
How is The Collective already benefiting the community?
Libby Bullinger, whose personal priority is to promote health and wellness in the dance world and advocate for preventive methods before injuries occur, tackled this question. She shared that “as an artistic athlete, myself, our bodies are our livelihoods. So the culture of performance arts often emphasizes a no pain, no gain mentality that makes it really difficult for us to seek out medical attention. Dancers usually wait to address physical pain until it’s far too late in the process, which is why the proper care and injury prevention that The Collective is advocating for is really important.”
She went further to point out that when you increase access to preventive services like the ones offered by The Collective, artistic athletes are able to focus on what’s really important: making and sharing their art. And it’s what every artistic athlete should have the access and opportunity to do.
“The whole no pain, no gain culture that is ubiquitous in the performing arts, we all know, especially those of us on the healthcare side of it, that culture needs to change” - Melissa Buffer, AAHC Founder
Melissa continued to stress that the mission of the collective is to shift this culture and prioritize proper care and injury prevention and, at the end of the day, prioritize the performers. The United States healthcare system is reactive and focuses on injury care rather than injury prevention and for artistic athletes in particular, that can be devastating. Melissa wants to change all of that through her work with The Collective.
How is The Collective going to accomplish this culture shift?
For Melissa, the answer to this question is quite simple: go to where the artists are.
It’s important for clinicians to understand the actual environment and what goes into prevention and wellness. So she broke down the steps involved. She shared that “we’re doing this by providing onsite services, which include physical therapy - literally right on site, we bring the table there - weekly recovery classes, specific recovery classes for post performance, pre-performance, training, warm up and cool down consultations, mental health and mindset motivation for the artists, nutrition consultants, we literally have a huge array of clinicians that are experts in exactly the needs that these artistic athletes have.”
Through this array of clinicians and on-site preventive care, The Collective is filling a void that has existed in the community for far too long. Melissa plans to fill that void by coming on site, meeting the artists where they are, and doing the things they need to as health professionals to provide preventive care to artistic athletes throughout the community.
How does this benefit the dance studios and theater companies?
All of The Collective’s services have been designed and curated with the artistic athletes front of mind. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exponentially benefit these companies and theaters as well.
As Melissa explained, “Providing these sorts of services helps companies and theaters continue to attract all of the top talent and provide the optimal work environment for their artistic athletes. The research is out there. These services will help studios and companies decrease their claims, costs and time loss and improve the overall well-being of the artists throughout the process. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
“These services will help studios and companies decrease their claims, costs and time loss and improve the overall well-being of the artists throughout the process. It’s a win-win for everybody.” - Melissa Buffer
Libby echoed Melissa’s sentiment by pointing out that “company wellness should be a top priority. And The Collective really helps companies accomplish this easily by conducting a thorough and individualized needs assessment and, from there, coordinating all the logistics so that studios can easily provide these services for their artists.”
She goes one step further and stresses what’s absolutely key for companies to recognize, “if the artistic athletes aren’t functioning at their best, at their highest capacity, then the art is going to suffer. So if companies want to be serious about advancing their product, the art they’re producing, they absolutely have to ensure that their artists’ needs are being met. And that means investing in wellness programs and prioritizing company wellness as a core value, not as an afterthought.”
“If the artistic athletes aren’t functioning at their best, at their highest capacity, then the art is going to suffer.” - Libby Bullinger
What does the future of The Collective look like?
Naturally, it was hard to produce a concise answer to this question because Melissa has many goals for the future of The Collective.
She shared with us that, first and foremost, she’s excited about The Collective’s Mentorship Program. The goal of this program is to increase the number of trained, interdisciplinary health professionals in the performing arts medicine world so that, as The Collective grows, they can continue to serve more and more artistic athletes throughout the community.
The first three months of the program is all about learning the didactic information, the lectures, in-person sessions, labs, etc. and the second three months, it’s all about application. Each mentee designs and implements a wellness program for an actual arts entity. The Mentorship Program, at present, has three mentees, one of whom is developing a Pilates based program for hypermobile bodies and artists. Another is putting together a workshop for health considerations and injury prevention for crew and tech. And the third is creating a health, wellness, strength and conditioning program for collegiate dancers.
These mentor created workshops and programs will be free and open to the public in order to give back to the community.
Melissa also shared that she envisions a future brick and mortar space for The Collective, “dedicated to the health and wellness of the artists of this community, a place where artists can come and train independently, take workshops, or receive care.”
As for Melissa and what The Collective means for her, she shared that “One of the best surprises of this collective so far has been how my job has shifted. I’ve been a physical therapist for 17 years now and I'm still very much a physical therapist. But to be able to utilize my skill sets as a PT, but also as an artist and dancer myself, in this new way. As a mentor, I cannot explain how good these new hats feel on my head and how excited I am to continue to wear these hats as we continue to grow The Collective.”
While we may have sat down with the Founder to learn her specific role in The Collective and its impact on the community, it is not lost on Melissa that it takes a village to make this sort of cultural change happen. The Artistic Athlete Health Collective is always looking for folks that are interested and, as Melissa said, “a rising tide lifts all ships. So the more, the merrier.”
If you’re interested in learning more about The Collective, please reach out. You can also watch the full interview here.