Dance and My Life

Dance is a huge part of my life and I would consider it a part of my character. I love to dance and I wouldn't want to be doing any other sport. When I go to practice I don't think about anything else but dance and that's what I love about it. 

The Blazettes is a great team to be on because we are super close, we are like sisters. Our coaches incorporate things into our team to make us stronger, for an example we have "sisters" where each of us gets paired with another person and we have to get them gifts for the football games or the competitions, things like tie blankets, puffy painted sports bras, and sometimes we just make cards and get candy or something small. Sisters also help eachother out by giving them comments to help make us better or if we have trouble learning the dances they help eachother. 

Even though I only danced for a year when I was younger and then quit to go back to gymnastics I still would rather be dancing right now then doing gymnastics. I think dance is more fun than gymnastics and athletes in gymnastics are more prone to injuries than athletes in dance. When I was in gymnastics I dreaded going to practice every day because it just wasn't fun for me anymore and our coaches were really hard on us. Now I'm usually excited to go to practice every day for dance and I always have fun even when it's hard for me. Our coaches are hard on us but I know it's only making us stronger and better and I know it's worth it. I think Blazettes has changed my life for the better, I used to never see my friends when I was in gymnastics and now I see them a lot more. Also in gymnastics I was always in a lot of pain and in dance I'm not in as much pain.

My favorite part of Blazettes is probably the feeling of performing at football games or comeptitions or wherever and hearing all your fans screaming for you when you're done dancing. I've always wanted to be a Blazette and now that I am one I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Dance in the World

There are many different styles of dance around the world today in a lot of different countries. Dances can be celebrations, or for praise, or for an audience. Dancers can communicate ideas, preserve cultural identities, strengthen social bonds, or just have a lot of fun.

African dances mainly refers to the many cultural differences. They mostly dance in tribes or worshiping gods. These dances help people work, mature, praise or criticize members of the community while celebrating festivals and funerals, competing, reciting history, proverbs and poetry, and to encounter gods. Traditional dance in Africa expresses the life of the community. Dancers are often seperated by gender, age, and status. The character of dancing observed by travelers depended on the people, and the gender of the dancers. Men usually used large body movements, including jumping and leaping and women used smaller body movements. Some types of dance are, warrior dances, dances of love, rites of passage and coming of age dances, dances of welcome, and dances of possession and summoning.

Dance in Australia includes a very broad variety of styles, from Indigenous Australian to the traditional Australian bush dance and from classical ballet, and ballroom dancing to contemporary dance and multicultural dance traditions. The Australian Dance Awards have been offered since 1997. Traditional Indigenous dance was closely associated with song. Bush dance has deveploped as a form of traditional dance.

These are just a few of the different types of dances around the world, there are hundreds more. The dancers that perform these specific types of dances may not consider them a sport but either way they are still getting physical activity. Some types of dances, usually ones relating to culture, are not considered sports, and some are.

                                             These are Australian Aboriginal dancers in 1981

Typical Day at Practice (winter)

I am a rookie to the winter team but when winter season began only 2 weeks ago I knew what I was in for from what other Blazettes had told me from being on the team last year. I was a little scared and nervous because they had all told me that winter was very intense and hard, and they told me all the really difficult things they did on the team last season to get ready for competitions. I guess all their hard work paid off because they got first a lot last year.

I made junior varsity kick and jazz. The first day of practice was pretty easy, all we did was listened to the rules and expectations of Blazettes and we started learning our dance because we had to perform it in 3 weeks! 3 weeks seems like a lot of time to learn a dance but it really isn't at all. We have to learn almost a 4 minute dance, we have to learn about 5 kick sets, we have to set formations, and we have to drill every part of the dance which means do it over and over again until it's perfect and there are absolutely no mistakes. As I have heard, this year has taken a lot more time to put the dance together than last year, I think this is because when we tried out the coaches didn't cut anybody who tried out and they accepted everyone onto the team. Maybe they think everybody has potential, but personally I think it was a mistake. I just hope everybody tries their hardest at every practice.

In the past 2 weeks we have learned our whole kick dance and part of our jazz dance. We have our first competition in one week, the 19th. I can't even explain how nervous I am because this is my first competition as a Blazette. I am also very excited because I love to perform and I can't wait to see how we do. I wish that people who do not believe dance is a sport could come to our practices and experience how much time and effort we put into something we all love to do.

Typical Day at Practice (summer)

In the summer of 2011 we had captain's practices and clinic/weight training practices. We had captain's practices starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 11 a.m and I would get up at 7 a.m. Clinic/weight training days started at 7 a.m. and ended at 10 a.m. I got up at 6 a.m. At the beginning of the summer I hated getting up so early when I knew everyone else was still sleeping, but I eventually got used to it.

I didn't like captains practices at all because they were the hardest. When we would get to Sioux Trail, the school we practiced at. We would always do a really hard warm up, usually we would all go on a 20 minute run and part of it would be uphill. It was even harder on really hot days. When we got done with our runs everybody was really sweaty and very tired. When we got inside we would stretch for about 15 minutes. Then we would do different things such as, kick technique, jazz across the floor, or learn our fall kick and jazz dance to get ready for performing it at JFK camp in a couple weeks.

At clinic/weight training days half of us would go to the weight room for the first hour and 15 minutes and the other half would go to the clinc the first half of practice and then we would switch off. These days were more laid back and easy so I liked them better even though we had to get up earlier. At the clinic our winter coaches were the leaders and we would usually do an easy warm up to start practice and then we would stretch, do kicks, jazz, etc. In the weight room our coach was Mr. Sali. He had us lift weights and do all kinds of things to get us stronger. I didn't really like weight training because it was boring and hard to me and I didn't see how it was making us better dancers, but I knew it wasn't hurting us in any way so I just went along with it and worked hard.

Reasons Why Dance is a Sport

Definition of a sport is:
Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
A particular form of this activity.
An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
An active pastime; recreation.

I have my own opinions why dance is a sport. It is a competitive sport, there is a state competition, we have practice 6 days a week 2.5-3 hours a day, seasonal/year round, definitely not as easy as it looks, there are professionals in dance, and many more reasons.

Blazettes are a very competitive team, we like to win, and we train to win and beat other teams. I would say we are a pretty successful team, we have won 10 state titles and we are known for kick. Every single person on the team is driven to do good and we all work very hard to be good. I try to give it my all at every practice because I know if I don't I will not only be bringing my whole team down but I will be bringing myself down.

I think a lot of people are starting to realize that dance is a sport and it's not just an easy, pointless activity that people just do for the fun of it. They are realizing this because there are more shows on tv such as, Dancing with the Stars, Americas Best Dance Crew, So You Think You Can Dance, songs, movies and many more things contributing to this. All kinds of people are into different types of dance and I think that is a great thing. It is also in pretty much every part of the world and I love that it is spreading more and more every day.

I'm definitely not a professional at dance but I think, like every other sport, that if you stick with it there's always a chance that you could someday become a pro. Like they say... practice makes perfect.

Why Some People May Not Think Dance is a Sport

Many people don't think dance is a sport but I have come to realize that the majority of people are guys. I don't know why this is, maybe because it isn't a contact sport, or maybe because they don't think we actually do work in dance and that it is an easy sport. A lot of people don't understand how much work we do and how much we practice until they experience it for themselves.

The kind of girls who don't think dance is a sport are the girls who play contact sports or girls that are really into sports; they like to participate in a lot of them, they like to watch them, and they understand pretty much every sport out there. I know this because most of the girls that i have talked to about this subject play soccer or basketball or hockey or softball. They usually think this way because they think dance isn't a competitive sport, but it is.

Every winter season of Blazettes runs from late October to late January. This is the competitive season. We have comeptitions every Saturday starting in mid-November and some on Tuesday nights. The competitions on Saturdays are usually all day long but we only perform one or two dances. Either kick or kick and jazz. Our training to get ready for competitions is very difficult and serious. We have to have really good endurance and learn our dances in about 3 weeks. It is very difficult to learn our dances in such little time because our coaches want them to be perfect and not everybody cooperates all the time. Sometimes I get frustrated but I know it will all be worth it once we get to perform!