Ballroom Dance: a sport or an art?

What are the two points of view on defining ballroom dance as a sport?
What are the athletic and artistic aspects of ballroom dance?
How does its history help to answer these questions?
ABOUT MY PROJECT
Aims
Answer raised questions.
Learn the history of ballroom dancing and its becoming a dancesport.
Spread the knowledge of ballroom dance.

Ballroom dance refers to a set of partner dances, which are danced in special shoes on special flooring and has two main features which separate them from other dances:
All ballroom dances are danced in couples, which consist of a man and a woman.
Couples dance in physical contact.

Let us read and let us dance –
two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
© Voltaire

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY…
In times past, ballroom dancing was social dancing for the privileged, leaving folk dancing for the lower classes. However, it should be noted even in times long gone, many ballroom dances were really elevated folk dances.
At that time ballroom dance was just leisure, one of the ways to spend spare time, something which is now considered to be social dancing. It was also an art, exhibition dancing, like, for example, ballet.

In 1920th ballroom dance competitions were started to develop. They were unofficial and not very strict, because there weren’t specific criteria how to evaluate dancers. That’s why in England in 1924 Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) started to create standards in music, steps and technique of dancing.

The 8-day Blackpool Dance Festival is the most famous annual ballroom dance competition of international significance, held in May in the Empress Ballroom at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, England since 1920. It is also the largest ballroom competition: in 2003, 1539 couples from 54 countries took part in the festival.
BLACKPOOL

The body says what words cannot.
©Martha Graham

Standard
Latin American
10 dances
INTERNATIONAL STYLES OF COMPETITIVE BALLROOM

Slow Waltz (English Waltz)

Tango

Viennese Waltz

Slow Foxtrot

Quckstep

Samba

Cha Cha Cha

Rumba

Paso Doble

Jive

The dance is a poem of which
each movement is a word.
©Mata Hari

Dancers are judged by different criteria, such as:
Posture
Musicality
Frame
Togetherness
Foot and leg action
Led and follow
Floor craft
Presentation (emotions)
Couple’s style (costumes, behavior on the floor etc.)
WHAT ARE COMPETITIONS LIKE?

The trained dancer must not only have grace and elegance,
but also the leap of an Olympic hurdler,
the balance of a tight-rope walker
and panther-like strength and agility.
© Camilla Jessel

Dancesport is competitive ballroom dancing, in contrast to social or exhibition dancing. The name was invented to help competitive ballroom dancing gain Olympic recognition.
On September 5, 1997 the International DanceSport Federation (IDSF) was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the sole representative body for dancesport.
THE BIRTH OF DANCESPORT

Physical strength.
Flexibility and coordination.
Endurance.
Discipline and team spirit.
Ballroom dance demands from dancers qualities which are demanded in real sports:

SO IT’S A SPORT…

… BUT AN ART ALSO!

Today we consider ballroom dance as “an artistic sport”. Why sport? Because it demands from dancers qualities, which are demanded in real sports. But in contrast of other sports, it has special features which allow considering it not only as a sport, but as an art also.
CONCLUSION
Dancers are athletes of God.
©Albert Einstein

Dance is the mother of the arts.
Music and poetry exist in time;
painting and architecture in space.
But the dance lives at once in time and space.
© Curt Sachs