Return to training, dancing, and performing. Dr. Stephanie Buza, our board-certified orthopedic surgeon and former ballet dancer, provides specialized sports and dance medicine care for hip, knee, and shoulder injuries that keep active people from moving freely.
Keep Your Body Ready to Perform
Orthopedic performing arts medicine, also known as dance medicine, focuses on diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal injuries that affect dancers, performers, and other artists whose work depends on precise, repetitive movement. It considers not only the injured joint or tissue, but also the physical demands of your performance. Treatment aims to restore movement, address underlying biomechanics, and help you return to rehearsing and performing while supporting your long-term ability to stay active.
Common Performing Arts Injuries We Treat:
- Snapping hip syndrome and dancer’s hip
- Hip labral tears
- Hip microinstability
- Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI)
- Stress fractures
- Patellar dislocations and kneecap instability
- Meniscus tears
- ACL injuries
- Tendon and soft tissue injuries
- Shoulder impingement
- Rotator cuff tears
- Shoulder instability and labral tears
Specialized Care for Elite Dancers & Artists
As a former classically trained ballet dancer, Dr. Buza understands the biomechanics behind demanding performance and how an injury can affect your technique, training, and career. Her orthopedic expertise in sports/dance medicine and performing arts medicine allows her to evaluate complex movement-related injuries with your specific physical demands in mind. As Orthopedic Director of the HSS Performing Arts Medicine Collaborative, she aims to help dancers and artists move confidently again.
Benefits of Dance Medicine:
- Care tailored to the unique physical demands of dancers and performers
- A deeper understanding of dance-specific biomechanics and movement patterns
- Treatment focused on your performance goals, not just your diagnosis
- Non-operative rehabilitation as the first line of care when appropriate
- Attention to joint tracking, strength, mobility, and movement control
- Physical therapy plans that support a gradual return to performance
- Minimally invasive surgical options when conservative care is not enough
- Preservation of natural joint mechanics and healthy tissue whenever possible
- A long-term focus on performance longevity and staying active
Preserve Performance Longevity Without Surgery
Surgery isn’t always the first step when pain threatens to keep you off the stage. Dr. Buza prioritizes conservative rehabilitation whenever appropriate, with treatment focused on addressing the movement patterns and factors contributing to your symptoms. Joint-tracking corrections may help improve how your hip, knee, or shoulder moves during demanding choreography.
Physical therapy referrals are also an important part of non-operative care. Targeted rehabilitation can build strength, improve mobility, correct movement mechanics, and reintroduce performance-specific demands. For dancers and artists, the ultimate goal is to go beyond simply getting through your next rehearsal: it is to support your long-term ability to perform.
Advanced, Minimally Invasive Surgical Interventions
If conservative care isn’t enough, surgery doesn’t have to mean losing the movement your performance depends on. Dr. Buza uses minimally invasive arthroscopic techniques to address hip, knee, and shoulder injuries and conditions. Through incisions called portals, she inserts an arthroscope (a narrow camera) along with specialized instruments that precisely access damaged structures.
Depending on your injury, arthroscopy may allow Dr. Buza to repair a torn hip or shoulder labrum, treat a damaged meniscus, reshape bone contributing to impingement, or repair injured soft tissues. Whenever appropriate, the approach emphasizes preserving healthy tissue and your natural joint. Rehabilitation then progressively restores mobility, strength, control, and performance-specific movement.
Your Comeback Story Starts Here.
Schedule Your Consultation for Sports Medicine in NYC
Dr. Stephanie Buza is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon, former classically trained ballet dancer, and Orthopedic Director of the HSS Performing Arts Medicine Collaborative. She has a keen understanding of movement, which allows her to offer individualized orthopedic care and help dancers, athletes, and active people protect their bodies and return confidently to what they love. Schedule your sports medicine consultation with Dr. Buza in New York City today.
