Is Dance A Sport? - A debate

Written by Brooklyn Schwartz, 04/21/2025

I'm gonna start by saying this, I am a dancer, I have been for over a decade, and everyone has the right to their own opinion (even though mine’s obviously better) So Is dance a sport? One of 

the most controversial questions there are. And we're gonna talk about both sides of the argument, as well as what I think. For the sake of this article, I'm going to be talking about competitive dance, which usually consists of dancers competing in multiple styles of dance. 

First, why it might be considered a sport; the Oxford dictionary defines it as “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” So let's break it down;

Physical excretion and skill

Definitely. Dance is exhausting, first because the warmups can be almost 30 minutes and then we are doing nonstop physical activity for hours without a break and rarely any time to get water. Plus, the amount of skill, focus, energy, precision, flexibility, technique, balance, coordination, and memory that goes into dancing is insane. Like, I'm thinking about approximately 15 independent things for just a single turn that lasts about half a second and then by the end of the routine I've had to think about around 200 different positions, timings, and techniques. 

Competes against others as a team or alone

While dance can be done just as a performance, I'm talking about competitive dance, the goal of which is literally just to prove you are better than the other teams. You go on stage, do your dance, then the next team goes, and so on. Until a panel of judges decides who was best. That's it. So I think we got competitive. And while dance is usually done as a team, it can be done solo in competition. So we can cross that off too.

For the purpose of entertainment

I'd say that's the main reason why the modern version of dance exists. I'm not gonna look it up, (because i'm probably wrong), but the premise of dance competitions is to be the best performer, and performances are for entertainment. I don't know if that's what Oxford meant by “for the purpose of entertainment” but whatever I say that's what it meant so that's what we're going with.

So it checks all the boxes, but why might it not be a sport? Well I asked some people how they would define a sport and they mostly said something along the lines of physical exercise or an active hobby. And dance is definitely those two, but some people said some more specific things like that it must be competitive and have definitive rules to win. Dance is not that. It is purely subjective to the judges. Some that it had to be played, and you cannot “play” dance. One person said it had to be in the olympics, and after australia's performance last summer, were not going to have a dance back in the olympics anytime soon. Although ballet used to be in the olympics. 

So is it a sport? – Well, I still don't really know, even though I just spent a very long 30 seconds researching and collecting data. Because on one hand it is very hard. And it's a physical activity. On the other hand it's not really the first thing that comes to mind when I say “sport”. So just to be controversial, I'm saying no, because it doesn't need to be a sport to be hard. 

It doesn't really matter though, because no one really cares.

Bye!