Essay On Art Of Dance

The Art of Dance

Most people think dancing is just a hobby and source of entertainment. But there’s so much more to dancing. People forget to acknowledge that dancing is a passionate form of art expressed through a person’s body movement. Dance “is a performance art form consisting of purposefully selected sequences of human movement. This movement has aesthetic and symbolic value, and is acknowledged as dance by performers and observers within a particular culture.” It takes a lot of work, passion, and effort for a professional dancer to be able to learn a dance routine perfected to perform. Learning the skills and knowledge a dancer can learn and teach themselves through the movement of their body. The purpose of dance is to express the symbolic culture it presents. It takes many performance skills such as focus, body strength, musicality timing, flexibility, and passion. By developing these skills, can slowly piece together all the meaning of the movements in a dance.

There are many different variety and style of dancing, but ballet requires the most amount of training of the body to learn and perfect. Ballet is demanding and intense. In order to make it as a professional, ballerinas must be physically shaped. Mostly taught at a young age during childhood to pursue the correct athletic abilities of a ballerina to progress on to their dance career as an adult. According to the School of American Ballet, “ballerinas need to be flexible, evenly proportioned, and

coordinated.” The most important skill of being a ballerina is posture. Aligning the body to maintain balance, keeping straight, tight, shoulder blades pulled back, chin in, and distributing the weight of one’s body into the tips of their toes. As if being pulled up by a string like a puppet. By using the correct form, ballet dancers develop the muscle memories need to keep their bodies performing safely. Without the proper posture, ballerinas are more likely to increases the risk of injuries. "If dancers maintain a neutral posture, they are not putting the body under so much strain, and are less likely to sustain an injury," says the English National Ballet's chartered physiotherapist, Jackie Pelly. To progress into being a great ballerina one must be very flexible, gradually growing use to constantly stretching to extend their legs longer and higher in the air. Not only being flexible with their body but also with their mind. Being a ballet dancer is centered by being able to learn new step and techniques in a quick paste. Because there is constantly change within choreography, ballet dancers must be flexible to manage and adjust to new techniques. Always being corrected on alignment, and etiquette. Ballerinas are required to focus on their steps and pointing out their flaws to alter their movement to the best of their abilities in order to better their craft of dancing. Striving to look as a feather floating on stage while dancing, making their movements look beautiful when conducted properly. Lastly, it takes a great deal of memorization to learn steps to a routine. Ballet dancers spending a great amount of time in the studio preparing. Learning repetitive foot work and routine exercises before performing on the big stage. To be a fast learner demands strong memory and listening skills. Given verbal and visual instructions and quacking putting then into action.
What makes dancers, such as ballerinas, unique is that they dedicate their whole life and physical being into the art of dance which takes passion and love.

Mercier Cunningham, one of the most innovative and influential dancer of the 20th century one said, “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel

alive.”