LESSON 5

CHEER DANCE

What is Cheerdance?

Cheerdance is coined from the words: “cheer”, and “dance.” To cheer is to shout out words or phrases that may help motivate and boost the morale of a playing team and perform better during a game. While, to Dance is a physical activity where one expresses emotions or gestures while performing bodily movements usually in time and rhythm. On the other hand, Cheerleading is the performance of a routine, usually dominated by a gymnastic skill such as jumps, tumbling skills, lifts and tosses combined with shouting of cheers and yells to lead the crowd to cheer for a certain team during a game or sport. Therefore, Cheerdancing, is rooted from cheerleading.

How did Cheerdancing start?

Cheerleading history is linked closely to the United States’s history of sports, its sporting venues, as well as the historical development of overall crowd participation at many Athletic events (history of cheerleading, 2015). However, its origin can be traced as far back as the late 19th century where in 1860’s students from Great Britain began to cheer and chant in unison for their favorite athletes at sporting events. This event eventually reached and influenced America (timeline of cheerleading, 2012). In the late 1880’s the first organized recorded yell done in locomotive style was performed in an American campus and was first seen and heard during a college football game. However, organized all-male cheerleading only transpired when Thomas Peebles, one of the graduates of Princeton University, brought the yell and the football sports to the University of Minnesota in 1884.