dancing

scriptmedic:

scripttorture:

How very classical,
like something out of Grimm. 🙂

Forced exercise like
this was a very popular torture in Europe during and after World War 2. Victims
usually weren’t made to dance but running without shoes over rough ground and
crawling both show up fairly regularly.

Because the sources I
have are prisoners of war my estimates here are based on adult men. The average
teenage girl, physically active or not, is probably not going to be able to
keep up constant exercise as long as a similarly physically active healthy man.

But I think the type of exercise could make a difference
here too.

The exercises POWs were
forced to perform were designed to be painful and humiliating. They were
supposed to force prisoners to contort themselves in painful and unusual ways.
An athlete who is used to the
particular sort of exercise they’re being forced to perform would be able to
continue for longer and wouldn’t experience pain until later.

There’s also (depending
on how magic works in your story) potential for your character to modulate her
performance. POWs being forced to exercise were beaten whenever they slowed
down but if the spell is simply supposed to keep your character dancing then
there’s potential for her to control
which dance she uses.

I’m no expert in ballet
(in fact it just took me three attempts to spell it) but I do know that not all
ballet dances are equally physically demanding. An energetic dance full of
leaps and twirls is going to lead to physical collapse more quickly than a
slower, more sedate dance.

If your character can
reasonably expect rescue she could chose to resist torture by consciously
choosing a less demanding dance.

Rejali is pretty vague
on timings, describing it as going on for ‘hours’. This is probably partly
because a lot of the victim accounts measure not time but distance covered or the
number of repetitive exercises they were forced to do (500 knee bends, standing
up and sitting down 200 times, etc.)

Cobain gives more
precise times. Four hours forced walking in circles (while beaten). The man had
been starved for some time. Another account describes scrubbing a cell for
around 10 hours with little clothing at -20F. Another describes forced walking
from 4am to 9:30 pm, with brief breaks for meals twice a day. Those prisoners
were starved.

A description from
Rejali of torture of Japanese inmates describes them being forced to run 2 kilometres
for every drink of water.

So my educated guess is
that anything between 4-10 hours is probably reasonable for someone who is
physically active, healthy to start with and generally eats normally. There’s a
lot of individual variance and as I mentioned before the type of exercise makes
a difference.

With what you’ve said
about your character I think that 6-8 hours is probably your best bet with a moderately
energetic ballet dance. Especially if she has a partner later on.

She’ll not only be
exhausted afterwards but severely dehydrated. She’ll also have some hugely
painful muscular aches that will take several days to ease.

I hope this helps. 🙂

Disclaimer

Small addition, if I may: this may also be lethal depending on the type and intensity of dance. Muscle breakdown is possible from this kind of prolonged activity, particularly if she has zero control over type of dance (and thus which muscles are used when).

A conditioned dancer will tolerate this better than an unconditioned one, as the body is better at clearing lactic acid. So if she’s just started dancing after some time away from it (and thus relatively out of shape), she’ll collapse a lot sooner than she would in her prime. 

Also, the faster the dance, the more likely she is to collapse. 

The condition I’m thinking of is rhabdomyolysis, where the byproducts of muscle breakdown begin to clog the kidney. This can cause kidney failure which can be lethal.

I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen, but it’s possible.

xoxo, Aunt Scripty