Dance, including ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, and not just breakdancing should be know as a sport not just as an art form. It takes blood, sweat, tears and hard work to even come close to mastering it and even then you have to keep working. Just as you have to work hard at your shots in Soccer or Hockey, you have to work hard at your kicks and jumps in dance.

From my personal experience of participating in both Soccer and Dance. I have found that I am equally sore and tired after both of these sports. Yes, I may not be shooting on net for a soccer goal in dance but I am shooting my kicks and jumps into the air to win first at a competition. To me I see no difference between winning a soccer game and winning a dance competition.

Training for dance and soccer may target different areas of the body but that’s simply because they are different sports. To dance I don’t need to learn to control a ball but instead need to learn to control my body. Sometimes I even found my dance workouts (yes we do extremely intense workouts to strengthen our bodies, just like every other sport) even more difficult then my soccer training. 

After doing some research about why it hasn’t ever been considered for the Olympics I found that because there is (apparently) no way to differentiate a great dancer from a good dancer. Well then I have to ask… how is it possible to have a winner at a dance competition if there is no set technique and layout to determine a good dancer? Also, apparently there is no set technique to give the judges… again, what’s the point of me training so hard at something that apparently doesn’t have a set technique? All a dancer hears is “pointe your toes!”,”come on, where’s that technique?!”. So humorously I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Just like a gymnastics floor routine, there are easier and more different tricks and moves. So realistically the way you judge a gymnastics floor routine should be eerily similar to how you would judge a dance routine. 

Also another reason dance should be considered for the future Olympics is the simple fact that it would engage a who new set of audience members from seniors, who may be retired dancers, to children, inspired to become a professional dancer.   

Some say that a sport is something that makes you sweat, well point proven! Some say that a sport contains constant rigorous training to achieve a specific goal, well point proven again! The only stereotype of a sport that I can’t debunk is the one that insists that a sport is something that takes part in the Olympics and that’s what I want to change. All sports, except for dance, take part in the Olympics and kids all around the world get inspired to try these new sports. But what about us dancers? We get kicked to the sidelines, get told that we don’t do a sport while barely able to talk after a long day of rehearsals. It takes an athlete to dance! #DanceintheOlymics