People dance all the time. They dance at parties, they also dance in the car with their friends, and they can dance in the stands of their school Friday night football game when they play music over the loudspeaker. That’s just typical, every day, fun, dancing and it isn’t the sport of dance. Dancers train and develop conditioning, and techniques like any other athlete does for their sport. Which goes to show, that dance is a sport.
People would be more likely to say dance is an art, rather than a sport. But I would beg to differ. The official definition of a sport defined by Oxford Dictionary states “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” (Oxford). Therefore, dance is a sport, because it involves physical exertion and skill, and individuals and teams can compete in dance. Dance requires years of rigorous training to be able to perform and compete at the highest level. For example, soccer players train for years to develop their foot skills to be able to play in a game, and the conditioning to be able to run at their fullest, and the same goes for dance. The article Is Dance a Sport?, states “Soccer players have to train before games to be able to run on the field for long periods of time. Swimmers have to be prepared to do multiple laps without getting too winded. Similarly, dancers have to condition themselves to dance for long periods of time.”(Is Dance a Sport). Dancers train to condition themselves to be able to dance at the highest of levels for however long their performance lasts. They train on an average of 4 hours per day, for any number of days they are at practice per week. They must train for the skills they need to perform on the stage, and the conditioning to do this for however long they need per performance. Therefore, dance is a sport because of the physical commitment and exertion a dancer has to make.
Dance requires perfection of technique, much like any other sport. For example, soccer players have to train many years to develop their foot skills and techniques to help improve their play. Likewise, there are many techniques that a dancer needs to perfect before they perform them. Dancers spend the majority of their time in practice and rehearsal perfecting the technique of their moves. Dance requires hours and hours of technical perfection to have the dancer performance-ready. Without proper technique training, a dancer has a risk of serious injury. Because of the many leaps and jumps dancers perform, they need to learn how to take off for the leap or jump, perform their leap or jump in the air, and be able to land with their legs and feet turned out, without getting injured. This shows the amount of work and effort that has to be put into a dancers technique to make their performance look flawless. The time to perfect a dancers technique can also be added to the reason of why dance is a sport.
Dance is a sport because of the rigor of training to be able to dance in a performance. Dance requires strength, stamina, and technique to be able to make their performances look flawless. Other sports like soccer, require the same type of training, but the training is used in a different way. With these attributes in mind, dance can be categorized as a sport.
Works cited links:
http://celebritydancestudio.com/new-blog/2018/4/3/is-dance-a-sport-yesand-heres-why
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/sport_1
