The weekend of Relay for Life, a group of friends were playing “Ultimate Frisbee,” which is similar to football, but with a frisbee. This game consisted of a lot of running and some of the stu-dents playing the game were dancers, and they seemed to be the only ones getting tired from run-ning.
Senior Nathan Fleming said, “Next time dancers complain about how people don’t con-sider them athletes, I would bring up the Drill Team’s lack of Frisbee skills.” Although he may have been joking, I took it to heart because a lot of people think like that.
Dance is a performing art and a form of hu-man expression and creativity. Therefore, I am not here to persuade readers that it is a sport. I want to inform everyone that dancers are athletes in every way that “normal” athletes are.
Technically, an athlete is anyone who does a sport OR any other type of physical activity. Dancing is physical activity, and it takes a lot more stamina and physical strength than people think. Let’s begin with a beginner technique: first position. First of all, your heels must be together.
Next you have to think about squeezing all of your muscles: thighs, butt, abdominals, triceps, etc.
Now you should worry about pushing down your shoulders. Imagine someone is putting all of their weight onto your shoulders, and they should go down. One of the biggest things is that your butt can’t be sticking out and no “S”-shaped backs.
Tuck it in and squeeze your abdominals even harder. Finally you can lift your chin, smile, breathe and be ready for the next ballet combina-tion.
All of that was just the very beginning of ballet class. That even goes for the three-year-olds that are just learning as it does for the dancers graduating next year. All of that happens in the first 30 seconds of dance class. Can you believe it? That seems to everyone else like dancers have to concentrate on how to perfectly stand in first position, but that isn’t true. Muscle memory is key in dancing, and it is really what makes you a good dancer. I can teach anyone how to properly use each muscle and do a perfect plié. Football players, please teach anyone how to properly use every muscle in our bodies when flipping a tire.
Now you are thinking that all dancers have to do is gain muscle memory and flexibility, which would also be wrong. How do we get the abdomi-nals or triceps that we need for ballet? Dancers’ legs are the strongest part of their bodies, but another thing people don’t realize is that dancers go through abdomen workouts and push-ups just like other athletes must do to get stronger. In jazz, stretching is important, but during that warm-up, you’d better be ready for some cardio or strength.
“Okay class, let’s warm-up, start walking,” a teacher might say. The next command will be to “take a jog.” Granted this may not be the typical Cross Country two mile warm-up, it is still some running that we need to do, which brings me to stamina.
Endurance is something very important in dancing. If you don’t have good endurance, then you might as well step out of the room, or you had better work on making it better. Lyrical or an up-beat jazz routine is a good example of this. Strength also comes into play with this one in the way that not only do your lungs need to be able to hold you up, but so do your legs.
Oh no, we still need to remember the muscle memory and technique aspect of this stuff? Keep your shoulders pressed down, loosen your wrists, use every muscle in your body that we just built in class. Dancing doesn’t stop at looking like a crazy person at school dances or just going to a class once a week. It is an art form. It is an expression, and it takes a true athlete to get through it.
Dancers may not run five miles every day, do 10 “cherry-pickers” at practice, have a ball in their hand or be kicking one with their feet, but we are all athletes. We are every bit as athletic as anyone else. Next time you judge a dancer by your outlook on it, think about what we go through every time we step into class.