dance & sport in a same category? (1st part)

My photos dance and sport are in a common category but is it really a good idea?

I'll start by telling you an anecdote.  A few months ago, someone asked me to take pictures during a Zumba class.  Ouch, Zumba is a sport but there is choreography and music... It's a bit as the basis of dance, isn't it.

Indeed, if I take Wikipedia's definition (translated from French), Dance is the art of moving the human body, which consists of a series of ordered movements, often rhythmed by music. »

As a result, Zumba meets this definition in the same way as fitness, which many dance schools have a class in their program. 

Personally, I add to this definition, a notion of grace or harmony that I generally find in dance and not necessarily in fitness or Zumba.

By the way, if I take the definition of dance in the Larousse dictionary:

- Art of expressing oneself by performing choreographic compositions; related activity: Classical dance lessons.

- A rhythmic and harmonious sequence of gestures and steps: She performed a few dance steps.

Therefore, we can really assume that dance is linked to harmony. 

Does it help on this matter? Not really because harmony is a rather difficult thing to define because it is more of a feeling or a feeling than something universal is. 

The twist for example is a dance but I don't necessarily see harmony (it’s a very personal point of view here). Moving your buttocks to the rhythm of the music is probably fun and maybe relaxing but is it harmonious?  Yet it is a dance in the same way as the Mia, the “duck dance” or a representation of Swan Lake by the Bolshoi. 

I caricature this point of course voluntarily to indicate that the word itself refers to a wide range of subjects and whose harmony is not always visible to everyone....

OK so it should be really easy to select a single category?

Well, no, not at all to be honest.  Because if I expected to see some comments telling me that Yes! Zumba can be considered a dance”, I was actually lynched by the dancers.

Because dancing is a sport! You insult us by trying to separate these two notions. said my contacts on this question.

Still extract from Wikipedia: Sport is a set of physical exercises practiced in the form of individual or group games that can lead to competitions. »

And it is this notion of physical exercise that poses a problem for them.

Whatever the dance is, there is indeed a physical work.  You have all experienced or seen dancers return to their chairs at a wedding and are happy to catch their breath and drink a sip of water.

And what about these hours of training and learning that people whose passion or profession is theirs do to offer you these few minutes of shows.

I sometimes attend workshops organized by the ateliers de Anne DK and my impression is always there even at the end of the day, these girls and guys are warriors!

I have often said it, so I must admit that I misunderstood a little and therefore took the little storm that my question had raised very badly.

What do you mean ?

Moreover, the WHO has published Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health and not on sport.  Looking at some illustrations on the French version (as there is no picture on the English one), there is on first page a kid playing football and two images of dancers....

We therefore agree that dance is a sport because dancers are physically active.  The initial reason for separating these two categories is that I take many more dance photos than other sports and, as I really saw a difference between the two, I prefer to enhance them.

Faced with the outcry, I was forced to step back and to avoid insulting (against my will) people, I therefore gathered these two categories....

So why do you want to show both categories in the name if both are sport ?

If dance is a sport, no dancer really expects to find the dance photos in the sport section. So I decided to keep these two terms to avoid insulting other people again...

Isn’t it a special case ?

Well, no. When I discovered twirling (invited by a group of cheerleaders), I realised that I was facing a new discipline that was quite complicated to place.

A twirler has a stick and (sometimes) some clothes like a cheerleader... However, this is not enough to associate them with cheerleaders.  Because the discipline itself is closer to rhythmic gymnastics than to the majorette itself.

So that's sport! Well yes but to be honest, in rhythmic gymnastics or twirling, there is choreography and harmony in the movements - so we come back to the definition of dance but they are really sports disciplines....

So what?

Well, it's very complicated to separate dance and sport since the two are sometimes intimately linked.  So I decide to keep them together.... 

What about the notion of a show? 

It's also why initially I thought to separate the dance into a separate category... However, if I take into account all the points, I would have only a photo category and still we can discuss the actual definition of a photo ! Look at some facebook or forum groups and you will quickly understand what I mean.

Especially since I didn't mention the cyclists climbing the hill as dancers or the footballers with gestures so technical that they become artists.

So when I write these lines, these two categories are combined.  What about tomorrow?  Wet and sea as they say in the Navy (do you like too this joke ?)