Is Dance Real Exercise? A Parent's Guide

When you are choosing an activity for your child, the question is usually whether it counts as real exercise. Dance does, and not only because it makes them sweat.

The fitness part

A class runs for an hour and most of it is movement: warm-up, drills, then choreography repeated until it is clean. That is continuous work at a moderate to hard pace, which is how aerobic fitness is built.

Dance also builds strength where school sport tends to skip: ankles, calves, the muscles around the hips, and the core that holds a freeze or a balance. Breaking and popping ask for control in positions most sports never put you in.

The coordination part

Learning choreography means holding a sequence in your head while each limb does something different on a count. That is a coordination task, and it improves with practice the way reading does.

Parents usually notice this before anything else. A child who could not skip becomes a child who picks up a step from a video in ten minutes.

The part that is harder to measure

A dancer has to perform. Not eventually, and not only if they are good: the showcase puts every student on a stage. That is a different skill from being fit, and it travels. Children who learn to stand in front of a room and do the thing they practised tend to stop avoiding the front of the classroom.

How it compares with team sport

Team sport teaches you to read a game and work inside a group trying to win. Dance teaches you to hold a standard when nobody is keeping score. Plenty of our students do both.

What dance offers that most sports do not is a place where the shy child is not benched. There is no bench in a dance class. Everyone is in the routine, or the routine does not work.

Trying it

Kidz classes run Tuesdays and Thursdays from 17:00, and Group B trains Fridays at 16:00 or Saturdays at 10:30. The 13+ programme runs on Friday evening and across three levels on Saturday, and Beginner is open to anyone.

Classes are R1,000 a month with a once-off R250 registration. Drop-in for the 13+ classes is R200 a session.

Message 082 572 9407 if you want help choosing a class, or open the classes page for times and fees.