Category: Art

Dance is a Sport! Yet it Appears Effortless

Here is how Dance is like a sport!

It takes years of training like any professional athlete. Dancers train for years of study to become the best they can be from elementary age through high school and sometimes even college—this requires desire, passion, determination, drive, and hard work.

A great deal of sweating through demanding classes and even a little blood or tears may find their way into the process.

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It demands sacrifice and discipline including not going to or showing up late to all those afterschool and weekend parties with friends. If it was easy, where would the challenge or the euphoria be at the end of the day offering a sense of accomplishment.

It is what you love to do—then all the blood, sweat, and tears are worth it.

It demands incredible stamina.  Dance is anaerobic and aerobic like a basketball player running back and forth across the court or a soccer player running back and forth across the field.

Dancers need stamina to make it through a show that can be up to two to three hours long!  You must make it appear effortless and not show the audience how hard you are breathing.

It is competitive.  How many athletes train their whole lives, get to the draft and do not get chosen, or get through the draft yet end up without a contract? 

We are competing for trainee and apprentice programs and yet may never receive the elusive contract. And if you do receive a contract you are always competing for a new role or auditioning for another job.

It builds strength like all sports. Dance builds coordination, muscular strength emphasizing long muscles over bulk and articulation of all the extremities from one’s fingers to one’s toes.

It requires specialized equipment to reduce injuries.  This includes the type of floor we dance on to the type of footwear used. Inferior equipment can lead to injury and a bad performance. 

A baseball player would never use a poor-quality glove; a football player would never use a cheap helmet and thus a dancer would never wear a less-than-perfect tap shoe, jazz shoe or pointe shoe.

Our Bodies are our instrument and shaped by the work we do every day!  So many fitness regimes like to tout how they can help you achieve a dancer’s body! You can walk behind a serious athlete and recognize them by their gait, musculature, and posture.

So too can pick you to pick out a dancer with chest lifted forward, chin up and perhaps the turn out of the legs.

Stretching is an artform that other athletes take for granted—we stretch to continue to work our bodies, reduce soreness and perform what may seem impossible.

Dance can lead to serious injuries due to overwork and constantly pushing our bodies to do amazing feats including to defy gravity. Just like any serious athlete we push the physical limitations of the human body.

Uniforms are often required to build a sense of community. Sporting school colors and or level colors inspire all to work together and to see the next horizon we are striving to leap into for the next year.

Contact: Cleveland City Dance

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