Art or Sport?
If someone was to ask you if you are on a sports team and you answered with "Yes, I am on a dance team,” they would tell you that dance is not a sport but it is an art. Many people believe that dance is not athletic and it is just a small contribution to people’s athletic ability. Most people think that dance is not a workout for people and that there is no competition in the dance world. There are many different articles that talk about the topic of dancing and debating if dance is considered a sport or if it is just a form of art. Authors of a few articles compare other sports to dance and how dance could be considered to be a sport. In the articles they take a look at the definition of sports and athletes, then compare the definitions to what dance is. These articles also explore into the activities dancers do and how it affects the body. They show many cases of how dance is all over the world with many athletes contributing to the sport of dance. Comparing dance to how it is defined in the dictionary is one reason why dance is a sport. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary it states that sport is defined as, “Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competition.” Many dance teams around the world compete with others to win the first place trophies and the title of champion. In the article “Dance- Is it a Sport” by Aubree James she states that “Dancers compete against other dancers and routines must comply with a set of rules. Dance moves must be done in a certain way, land them in a certain way, and have a certain number of balances, turns, and flexibility moves in each level” (par.2). In her quote she mentions how there are rules to how and what the dancers must do to compete with each other. Her quote follows the definition which states that within a sport you have to follow the rules set aside and be competitive to win. Merriam-Webster definition of athlete states that “A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.” This definition states that dancers or athletes need to be flexible and have the strength and agility to be durable with the exercise of the sport. James also states that “Warm up exercises are a necessity so that a dancer will not pull muscles. For dancer to be able to jump high off the ground they need agility and strength” (par.2). In her quotes she states that dancers have all the qualities of the definition to be athletes in a sport. So with all the qualities from the dictionary definitions, dance is considered a sport. Dance is very similar to many other sports out there. So why is dance not considered a sport? In the article “Dancers Got Game” it compares other athletes’ opinions to what they think of dance: “Tony Guglietti, a former college-level hockey player who now dances professionally in New York City points out, ‘People involved in both dance and athletics see that they complement each other’” (Jarrett 73). Jarrett also states that that “Pucci stated, ‘when I first started dancing [in 8th grade because members of his baseball team had decided to], dance actually helped me with sports’” (Jarrett 73). In her two quotes the professional athletes stated that dance helped them with their own sports by contributing to their agility and balance of their own well-being. In another article by Emily Macel Theys, she states that "A parallel second-position plié is the same stance as a free throw in basketball, lineman's stance in football is like a lunge, or a batter's stance in baseball is like a grand plié" (Theys 48). In Theys quote, she states that in many professional sports there are stances and moves that are just like moves and techniques in dance. These moves help balance and control an athlete’s body therefor, dance is just like any other sport. Another statement Theys mentions was that
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