"I should never judge anything that I do not clearly and distinctly understand." ~Descartes
Before entering into what I would like to call "The world of dance," I think it is only necessary that I include the basic background information about myself and why I chose to study not only the"art," but the athleticism of dance as well. I was a three sport athlete throughout my high school years. Even when I was in elementary and Jr. high I was constantly involved in sports; mainly soccer, swimming, and track.
I was either at school, practice, or sleeping. I had/have what a lot of people consider to be "athletic ability" because I can run, jump, and swim considerably fast. On the other hand, my mother and her three sisters were all dancers growing up. I would constantly make fun of them when they argued dancing was a real sport requiring athletic ability. Not only did I disagree with them, I never even took the time to see where they were coming from. I automatically assumed dancing was for individuals who could not perform well in actual sports such as basketball, soccer, and so on. I also thought of dancing as an excuse to express sexuality without getting in trouble for it. The main reason I thought this was from all the stereotyping that goes on in today's society. The media is a huge factor when it comes to provoking stereotypes and it is often hard to ignore. Peers in my school constantly categorized all the different types of people into specific groups ranging anywhere from jocks, preps, sluts, nerds, or gothics. In that group of "sluts" were strictly girls who would sleep around with a lot of people. Not only were the girls who slept around with several different people, but the dance team were classified as "sluts," too. Why on earth did/do people automatically assume dancers to be slutty or relate to them in a sexual manner? Why is it that most of the time we consider dancers to have "big boobs and blond hair;" and where are all of these assumptions coming from? Referring to my own biased judgements and hands-on research with dancers using interviews and observations, I would have to say the media is mainly to blame.