Dance is seen only as an art to some individuals but in actuality it is a hard working sport as well. The definition of sport is, “an active diversion requiring physical exertions and competition or the occupation of athletes who compete for pay”Sport: Definition. Dance is one way to express oneself, or to tell a story but also to be able to express those dance moves it needs skill and time. Dance has a lot of different types of preparation for example, balance and cardio making that is “physical exertions”Sport: Definition.
Each dance genre has a competition in local, regional and state competitions, also television shows. If one is lucky enough he/she will also get a well-paid job just to dance for a company, just like being in the NFL. To be anything professional in any sport one has to building from small steps to get to the top, and the spirit of dance is not as easy as it looks. All of this comes down to time, strength, weakness and motivation.
Any individual can move his/her body and consider it dancing and he/she can throw a ball and say it’s a sport but one would not be consider a football player just because he/she throws aball, same concept for dancing. The reason being each sport has specific skills which one has to build to become an athlete. Any preparation done in any sport is done by practicing. Practicing is just one of the building blocks in sports. Anyone can move their body left to right but to able to do jumps, leaps, and turns determine skills. Cardio is extremely important for dance routine. Music pieces are for one min long as long as two hours.
Just like soccer where running up and down the field takes a lot of cardio and stamina, so does dance in a different way. To be able to have such good cardio for the dance routines, dancers run or jog to build up on cardio. Next is flexibility, which dancers are known to have. Flexibility is not given naturally to dancers, stretching their muscles to the max each day makes the perfect leaps in the air. Sometimes dancers have to pop bones out of the sockets to make a perfect split, these stretches are not the easiest.
While on a dance team I told the football players,(real athletes), to practice with us. Little did they know it would be hard. Balance is a must to learn in dance. Turns are based on balance and spotting. Turns have to be on precise and well executed. To do any type of turn it requires skills. Every football player tried, and not one could even do half a turn because its takes practice and skill. Memorization is a key in a lot of sports, for example football plays. Just like on the field you have to remember plays, for dancing you have to remember a whole dance piece and counts.
Some may think dance is not really considered a sport because there is no ball. Dancing does not have a ball or any time of running, but does swimming have any of those? Is swimming not considered a sport either? Instead of a ball in dance we have props included with the dance moves. So just like a football player, the ball is the prop and the play is the dance routine.
At times there are dance props like chairs, ropes, umbrellas, people and even balls during the dance. There is no running in dance but there are leaps and jumps just like in track. Runner’s jump over hurdles. Ironically for them to do so require the same preparation as dance; stretching, running, precision. With such strong similarities how could on argue that dance is not a sport?
If you don’t land a dance move right, you can get seriously injured just like any sport. The same risk of injuries in any sport is found in dance. In dance one can get a fractured bone, sprained ankle, bruises and more. Landing wrong after a jump can lead to a severe injury making it hard to dance.
