Dance: Sport or Art

 

Dance is way people express themselves without having to say a word. Its only you and the music. All you do is listen to the beat and move however you want to. To others though it is more aggressive and competitive. An example of this would be the popular show Dance Moms where girls take part in competitions to win so that to themselves they are the best dancers. Then there are other studios who don’t compete but rather take part in exams to test their technique and knowledge about this activity.  Isn’t that was normal sports do. They are competing, and testing their knowledge and technique in it. For example lets go with football. In football you have to compete against the other team to win, use your knowledge about the sport to get ahead of the game, and your technique to to grab the ball and have the crowd yell “TOUCH DOWN!” Now if dance has everything football has why isn’t is a sport. To the world dance is an art but to any dancer dance is one of the hardest sports known to man.

My opinion on this matter is that dance is both. To me dance is a sport because of the mind set and stamina you need to perform it while keeping a smiling face to make it look easy. Dancing on your toes is probably the hardest thing I have ever done. You are literally putting all your weight onto your big toe. To do that you need strength. Just like in any other sport. But in other sports you do not need to keep smiling and pretending that those 30 fouette turns you’re doing are easy. In other sports you can show the aggression, you can scream, and your can shout. You don’t have to hide anything. For some reason people think “Oh! Dance is just girls in tutus, dancing on there toes.” Well one, there are other forms of dance for example, hip-hop, tap, modern, lyrical, jazz, and others. And yes we do wear tutus but most of the time what were are wearing is blood, sweat, and tears. But we can’t  complain too much because no pain, no gain! The reason I think dance is an art is because of the way we express it. Just like I said before, we don’t talk, we don’t yell, we just dance. We are like paintings that move.  We are graceful, and artistic with the way we present ourselves to the audience. We may not hit  each other, or score a goal, but we do work hard just  as any other athlete. So maybe one day those football players can step into “our pointe shoes” and try a grand jete en tournant, I think they would change their view on dance.

~Isabella