Each week dancers, parents and dance supporters pull in and out of the parking lot of the Luv 2 Dance studio located in West Kaysville, Utah. For many of us, it’s become as repetitious as the positions and and plié’s of ballet. Almost. Like the muscle memory that ballet’s basic skills provide to advancing dancers, our dancers are building much more then the repetitious patterns of weekly predictability we think they are.
Scientifically proven, the benefits that dance provides may be far above and beyond your first reasons for enrolling your dancer in a L2D’s recreational dance class or supporting their desire to audition to compete on a L2D competition team. Yes, much more then the skills they learn as they train in different genre’s of dance, they are gaining a whole lot more then I’m sure you even realized.
Easily recognized are the obvious physical fitness benefits of dance. Cardiovascular strength, muscle tone, endurance and motor fitness and on and on and on. General health is a pretty decent benefit to dance. However, did you know that beyond all that, dancers bones are stronger which help to reduce the risk of osteoporosis in the future? And…though flexibility is amazing all by itself, especially for those who can barely touch our toes, dancing improves balance, coordination, agility and even helps with spatial awareness. Even better still, science has proven that dance not only improves self-confidence and self-esteem, it also improves over all mental functioning and helps to relieve stress and improves mood. Better still, it teaches some of the most fundamental and basic of all social skills as they work with teachers, mentors and teammates. We’re sure you knew that, but did you know that positive relationships have been said to be as important as healthy eating and exercise? Positivity that affects an individuals happiness, reduces stress and even boosts a strong immune system. Though all of this sounds great, my favorite factoid of scientific research clearly states that, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, dancing helps to improve memory and could potentially prevent the development of dementia as you get older. Which means when our dancers are 90 years young, they’ll still be leading off with “5-6-7-8” and remembering all those incredible routines of “yesteryear” and their amazing time at Luv 2 Dance!
Happy dancing everyone! (Proven to be amazing.)