Dance In/As/For/Through/Over/And Sport

 ....hmmm. A questionable title. Quite literally.

Is dance a sport?

The age old question. A question that has appeared many times in my life in many places. And full disclosure, I haven't really cared. At all. I'd be more annoyed that I was being asked the question than at anyone's actual answer to it.

Maybe it's odd that as a dancer I never really cared about the answer, but I suppose that stems from the fact that in my view, dance is whatever it is to me and it is whatever it is to you. Because really, you could define it as a whole plethora of things...

1. Performance makes dance art
2. Classes make dance education
3. Exams make dance a discipline 
4. Theatre makes dance entertainment
5. Therapy makes dance medicine
6. Choreography makes dance creativity
7. Recreation makes dance a hobby
8. Kitchen boogieing makes dance a pastime 
9. Clubbing makes dance...a bit awkward...let's call it a release
10. Competitions make dance a sport ??

How are we really defining this?

Sticking to the sport, let's seek clarity:

SPORT: a game, competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment and/or as a job

[Cambridge Dictionary]

This was going well until the 'rules' bit. 

Is technique rules? If so, does the fact each genre has different rules mean each genre is its own sport? - i.e. Ballet is a sport, Jazz is a sport, Bollywood is a sport?

And how do we account for the fact that - dancers, let's be honest - sometimes, all the 'rules' you were taught go out the window. This can be a good thing of course; it pushes boundaries and creates new work or ways of moving or even new categories - I somehow feel that they put a Neo- or Postmodern- in front and can do what they want, which I'm not against per say, it just doesn't help the question here.

A tennis player can't just change the rules when she feels like mixing things up. Nor can a competitive swimmer decide to alter what the butterfly stroke looks like because he feels the old way is overdone. Not and get away with it.

But dancers break rules all. the. time. It's precisely how (and why) you can have been dancing for years and then watch a video that makes you say, "wow, never seen that before". It's how you can watch a ballet and go, "hang on, are they really working in parallel?" It's how we went from Ginger Rodgers in a feathered ballgown to showgirls in glorified underwear. We love both, but we had to break the rules to evolve. 

Dancers = Rule-Breakers

Of course we learn the technique, we learn the heritage, we learn the biomechanics, but then we cherry-pick and mix it up and add our own flair and if we can't do something, we'll do it a different way (if you've ever had to do a leg tilt with limited turnout, you know what inventing technique looks like).

And sometimes, rules just aren't even involved (please refer to points 6 and 9 on creativity and awkward clubbing). 

So let's regroup. Get the dictionary out again:

DANCE: to move the body and feet to music 

[Cambridge Dictionary]

Slightly ropey considering you don't necessarily need music (Contemporary dancers or STOMP tappers will vouch for this) but the point is we're moving the body.

Since dance has a competitive form (in a non-social, very much literal context) perhaps purely this aspect can be defined as a sport, where rules are upheld, marks are awarded, dancers/dances are compared, and there is a definitive 'winner'. Watching 'Strictly' on a wintery Saturday night doesn't feel the same as watching a sports match, but by this definition you may be able to class it as a sports competition. Just with extra sequins.

In February 2019, Breakdancing was announced as one of four sports being put forward for inclusion in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, involving head to head 'battles' in men's and women's events, and, unsurprisingly, was met with criticism, questions of whether dance was a sport, and retaliation that if figure skating and ice dancing were Winter sports, dance was surely suitable too. Thanks to the positive trials at the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, in December 2020, Breakdancing, to be titled Breaking, had its place at the Parisian event confirmed. 

(I repeat, because COVID has overshadowed this massively, dance is (will be) in the Olympics).

So why am I interested, given that I never cared about my first question? I'm not so much interested in the labels between dance and sport, but rather the relationship of the two. 

How does sport see dance?

How does dance see sport?

How can dance help sport?

What form of dance (i.e. points 1-10 above) does dance have to be in to be most effective for sportsmen/women?

What challenges will dance face in trying to supplement the training of professional athletes?

How can a dancer and sportsperson learn from each other?

What makes them fundamentally the same/different?

Why has dance, a proven effective cross-training discipline, been under-utilised in sport?

When I was in Sixth Form college, I was part of a project that set up weekly ballet classes with my local semi-professional Rugby League Academy (Wigan Warriors for anyone vaguely local to me). I cannot tell you how much I loved being a part of this. I was an assistant teacher so as well as demonstrating, I got to talk to the players about technique and safe practice as well as injury prevention and why, despite their muscles, they were incapable of holding their arm in second for the length of an exercise and why they were sweating just standing still. Safe to say they discovered muscles they didn't know they possessed and hurt (for the first few weeks) in ways they didn't know they could.

But what was so rewarding was seeing their progress. The intention was never to turn them into 'dancers', it was to supplement their rugby training and, the big one, to help prevent injuries. And that it did. The academy physio even remarked about the reduction in ankle injuries and despite the hesitations the coaches first had, they were pleasantly surprised at how effective the training method was. Once everyone realised how beneficial the classes were, they took it more seriously and made substantial progress.

It was, in a word, wonderful.

So that is why I am so drawn to the relationship of dance and sport. I feel there is such potential for dance as an elite training component for athletes and sportswo/men and although it is currently used in some institutions, it's almost kept as a secret they don't want to admit. 

Elite athletes require elite training, yet dance can be treated as the 'creative sibling'; not academic, not scientific, not sporty, maybe fun or artsy but not really serious. When the truth is, dance is all of those things (again, see points 1-10 above).

So circling back to the question - Is dance a sport? - I may update this slightly : 

Is dance a secret of sport?

References

ESPN. (2020). 'Break dancing gets Olympic status to debut at Paris games in 2024'. https://www.espn.co.uk/olympics/story/_/id/30470282/breakdancing-gets-olympic-status-debut-paris-games-2024

Wood, R. (2015). 'Breakdancing at the Olympic Games'. Topend Sports Website. https://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/sports/dancing.htm