By Faith Anderson
To the editors of The Raider Press,
I would like to bring your attention to how many of the articles in the sports section are football, girl’s and boy’s soccer, girl’s and boy’s cross country, and girl’s volleyball. Why leave out step/dance?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of a sport is “An athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature.” Dance is considered a form of art, of course, due to all its creativity, expressions of emotion, and freedom of movement. But it’s more than that. Its utter physicality, competitiveness, and athletics are paired with performance skills, flexibility, talents, and strengths of all forms. Not to mention competition! It should definitely be considered a sport. The feeling that comes with dance makes it a sport that has spice to it.
According to a sports magazine, Ispo, “At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, breakdancing will achieve what no other dance sport has done before it: for the first time, B-boys and B-girls will be breaking for Olympic medals. The next milestone for a sport that has its origins in the urban style of the Bronx.” Break dancing originated way back in the 1960s and early ‘70s in New York City. Clive Campbell, known as DJ Kool Herc is a Jamaican-American that made an impact on Hip-Hop and breakdancing in the Bronx and throughout America. Campbell was influenced by uses of soul, rock, funk, reggae, and dancehall which all contributed to the Hip-Hop sound and dance, which individuals enjoy expressing themselves through.
In Step Team practices at DHS, we do a lot of footwork, stepping, dancing, expressing, and flipping. We are all talented individuals coming together as a team to be talented as one, just as in any other sport you can think of. Working as a team, learning from a coach, developing physical skill, and maintaining a competitive nature connects our team to the same aspects as any other sport.
With timelines that go back into the 60s and earlier, the recognition of different forms of music, Hip-Hop, and expressions influenced the evolution of dancing and different forms of art today. Paired with its sports-like nature, dance should be covered by the DHS newspaper just like other teams.
Sincerely,
Faith Anderson ‘25
The Raider Press 