- Do you know these dancing fun facts?
Reminder before these dance fun facts that everyone can dance, just not everyone does. Here are all the dance fun facts, well most, because there’s a part two, too.
- Research proves that dancing reduces stress and tension for the mind and
body. - Studies by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute show that dancing prevents heart disease in particular.
- Dancers also have increased muscular strength, endurance and motor fitness.
- Dancing is so physically demanding that most professional dancers retire from dancing during their mid-30s.
- The “Dancing Plague” in Strasbourg, France in 1518 was a mania that lasted a month and killed dozens of people through exhaustion or heart attack. People danced until they literally collapsed!
- Another famous case involved people dancing on a bridge. Eventually so many people were dancing that the bridge broke and everyone fell into the water.
- The longest conga dance line world record was set by 119,986 people in Miami in 1988. This is one of the best of all the dancing fun facts.
- Tupac Shakur used to do ballet! He became a member of the 127th Street Ensemble, a Harlem based theater company.
- Breakdancing came back into worldwide popularity during 1990s.
- In 2008 the world’s first sustainable dance floor was created and open at Club Watt in Rotterdam. Each of the floor’s tiles sit on springs hooked up to generators. The harder people dance, the more the springs are compressed and this converts into energy, running the LED lights in the floor.
- The dance world is very superstitions. People say things like “break a leg” before a show, hoping the exact opposite will happen to those on stage.
- Hindu religion has a lot to do with dance and music. This is why there are so many Bollywood movies that all celebrate dancing.
- African slaves brought to Brazil 300-400 years ago were prohibited from practicing martial arts. They decided to make a mix of dancing and fighting that is known today as capoeira.
- Breakdancing, also known as hip-hop dance, was created as a “less lethal” form of fighting between African-American street gangs in 1970s Bronx area of New York City. Did you know this about the dancing fun facts?
- The most sensual modern dance is unquestionably the Tango. It originated in
the 1890s in Argentina, but it quickly became very successful in Europe. - Ballet started in Italy, with roots in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries. After spreading throughout Europe, it eventually became the classical ballet we now know.
- Michael Jackson’s moonwalk wasn’t exactly his. He certainly popularized the moonwalk in the 1980s, but it was actually first done by tap dancer Bill Bailey in 1943.
For the rest of the dance facts, follow the link to read Dancing Fun Facts: All About Dance: Part Two.