The Role Of Dance In The Nutcracker Dancer

Dancers putting all of their body weight on the tips of their toes effortlessly and yet people still believe that it is not a sport. Actual dance has been around since about 6000 B.C. It wasn’t brought into America on the mayflower; it has originated from each individual culture, from New York to Africa to Russia. People say that dance is just twirling and jumping on the stage however, Dance is, and should be considered a physically demanding sport.
Dancing meets all the criteria needed to be considered a sport. Dancing- (noun)-an activity involving a physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others. While dancing your body is almost constantly moving. Snow, a challenging dance in the Nutcracker
Ballet is over 7 minutes of constant work with very small breaks. you are constantly making sure your feet are turned out and toes pointed. The mixture of big and small movements makes it physically hard and also mentally hard, making sure that you are doing the correct moves and thinking about the sequence in which the moves come, this part goes with the skill portion. Finally, there are many competitions where the best dancers across the nation go head to head in a cut throat competition. “According to multiple tests concluded at the Gatorade sports science institute, dancers from fox’s So You Think You Can Dance were ranked among the professional athletes. (Abrahams, 2012). Gatorade is one of the number one sports drinks in America. The purpose of Gatorade is to re-energize and replace the fluids and electrolytes that are lost through the heavy sweating. If a sports drink named dancers among professional athletes then there must be sport quality within the dancing itself. Dancing is more than most people think. The practice that goes into training is strenuous on the body. Dancing has all the factors and more needed to be considered a sport.
Dancers work just as hard, if not harder than other athletes.
Daily exercise and rehearsals consist of repetition of exercises to achieve that physical attributes necessary to execute movement required. (Dancers as Athletes, 2012). I, as a dancer can relate to repetition. We dancers at Rocky Mountain Dance Theater will not move on until we get it correct. No matter who long it takes or how tired we are we will keep going at it until perfection is reached. Lauren Allaire ( a senior at SRHS, dancing for 14 years) says, “we condition every rehearsal which includes 6 minute planks, a total of 300 sit ups, 50 burpees, running laps and that’s only the warm up. I practice 20 hours a week to prepare for competitions.” (Abrahams, 2012). Lauren’s warmup shows that dancing is more than just “twirling” around a stage. It’s very exhausting and takes a lot of energy, most people would not be able to easily hold a 6 minute plank. You have to work extremely hard to be able to. Dancers go through excruciating pain to get where they are. Dancers go day to day, stopping for
nothing,
Not only is dancing a sport, dancers are also complete athletes.
Dancing has the same components as any other sports- to be able to dance well one needs to be flexible, strong, have, stamina, have endurance and most importantly you need to have a love for what you do (Garcht, 2013). Football players need the same components as dancers. Flexibility- because they need muscles to be safe when the fall. Strongness, to be able to tackle, stamina to be able to go far without stopping, and endurance to be able to keep playing. All Professional ballerinas practice/train 5 to 6 days a week, and take at least 10 classes a week to build technique. (normal day for a proffesional dancer, 2016). Most other athletes practice 10 or less hours a week, dancer practice 20-25 hours a week. That’s double the time, practice, pain and dedication dancing is one of the most athletic sports, from long hard practices to making it look effortless. If dance isn’t considered a sport than neither should football.
Critics believe that if dance is a sport than singing and fixing cars would be too. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary a sport is a physical activity engaged in for pleasure. However this is far from equitable. Dancing is more than just for pleasure. It keeps you in shape though work outs while also being an art and expressing yourself. They work every day from blistery feet to torn muscles. They rarely take sick or hurt days off. If they are too sick to dance they watch, in case of a change
in a dance, that’s not just pleasure, that’s dedication.
Dancers and dancing deserve the same respect as other athletes and sports. Football has been around about 150 years, whereas dancing has been around since before B.C. dancers give their lives up to pursue their career as professionals, early mornings to late nights, dancing 6 days a week. This is a very important topic to not only myself but to dancers across the world, we work harder than others, we sweat more; we are truly dedicated to every aspect of dancing. When dancing is viewed not as sport it makes people start to believe its true, even though it is far from accurate. Dancers have enough pressure as it is, not only the pressure on dancing in front of an entire auditorium, but the pressure on how they look; downgrading their career has nothing good to come from it. Sports critics need to open their eyes and realize that dancing is most definitely a sport.