Dance doesn’t just offer a chance for children to meet new friends and stay active. There are a multitude of benefits that dance can bring, not only to their childhood lives but further into the future too.
Here are our top 10 proven benefits of dance for children of all ages:
Confidence and Self Esteem
Dance classes provide children with an opportunity to learn a new skill, perform and develop their self-esteem and confidence, which transfer into all areas of their lives. Dance also promotes good posture, which has been proven to make us feel better about ourselves and more confident.
Community
Dance offers a community for children to be a part of, where they can make friends with similar hobbies and interests, experience shows and performance opportunities together and learn to work as part of a team.
Physical Benefits
Dance is an excellent way for children to develop many different physical skills. These include balance, flexibility, strength, conditioning, posture, agility, and stamina. Dance also teaches children how to exercise safely and how to look after their bodies.
Accomplishment
There are many opportunities for achievement within dance. These include performing on a stage in front of a crowd of people, completing a dance for an exam or mastering a particular skill or movement. These moments are great for promoting a child’s self-worth and self-esteem.
Resilience
Within dance, sometimes children will be challenged. It is essential that they keep trying, keep practising and don’t give up. Dance teaches children to work hard and keep going if it’s something they really want to do!
Creativity
Dance offers opportunities for children to express themselves in different ways, which can be extremely beneficial to self-expression and mental health. Learning how to be creative and use their imagination from a young age is very important for problem-solving, trying out new ideas and developing new ways of thinking.
Staying Active
This is an obvious benefit of many children’s activities. Staying active is extremely important for children of all ages, especially when children have been remote learning and have not been able to play with friends and attend as many clubs and activities.
Determination
Dance teaches children the ability to work towards goals, whether those goals are small or large and having the drive and determination to achieve those goals and ambitions.
Presentation Skills
Dance, and the performing arts as a whole, have significant benefits for a child’s posture, presentation and performance skills. Dance uniform encourages the children to take pride in their appearance, which stands them in great stead for the rest of their lives. Being able to stand up and perform on a stage or in class in front of their peers develops the ability to present themselves confidently in all areas of their life. This could be for an interview for university, their first job or a presentation at school or college.
Work Ethic
In dance, there is often a goal that we hope to achieve. That might be as small as learning a step, mastering a dance sequence, or larger goals such as, competing at a festival, dancing in a show or taking an exam. The work ethic that is required to reach these goals teaches children that although some things may come easily, lots of things in life may require hard work to achieve.
