Get active
6 reasons to dance your way back to health
There are lots of ways dancing can improve your health, whatever your age or ability. Check out these 6 reasons to get into dancing.
Published:
26 August 2016
Published:
26 August 2016
1. It can be a workout for your brain
Dancing is mainly linked to physical health benefits, but when you dance you are moving different part of your body in a coordinated way, and this activates several parts of the brain. One small study even found that dancing is associated with a lower risk of dementia. The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 469 people aged 75 and over, who didn’t have dementia at the start of the study. The researchers measured the association between leisure and physical activities and the likelihood of developing dementia over time. They found that dancing was the only physical activity associated with a lower risk of dementia.
2. But you don’t have to memorise moves
One of the best things about dance is its creativity – you’re free to interpret moves in your own way. Some varieties, such as ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) barn dancing, have a ‘caller’ who shouts out moves to the crowd.
Other dances, Zumba for example, have an instructor who stands at the front to demonstrate steps. It should be easy to find a class too – Zumba is among the top five most popular exercise classes in the UK, and more than half of dance fitness teachers run Zumba sessions.
- Find a class on the official Zumba website.
3. You can dance in a wheelchair
Para Dance UK aims to get a greater range of dance lovers involved with the sport. Wheelchair users can use an electric or manual wheelchair, and can dance with an able-bodied partner or with another wheelchair user.
The sport is even featured in the Paralympic Games.
- Find out more at the Para Dance UK website or call 0300 111 30 45.
4. It could protect you from heart disease
An Australian study, which pooled data from 48,000 British people, found that moderate intensity dancing is linked to a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Dancers were found to have a 46 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular death, compared with those who rarely or never danced. The study also suggested the social side of dancing, and the relaxation that comes with it, could be partly responsible for its health benefits.
5. You could learn about local history 
Playford dances and Scottish country dancing are just two of the many folk dancing varieties. In Staffordshire, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is an unusual performance where Maid Marian and her men cavort with 1,000-year-old deer horns.
Down in Padstow, the annual ’Obby ’Oss festival sees two colourful horses enact a dance battle on the streets.
Varieties of clog and step dancing are found across the UK. In newly industrialised Lancashire, workers wore wooden-soled clogs in the textile mills. Their percussive potential was incorporated into dances at social occasions.
6. You might even get to use a sword
Longsword dancing and Rapper dancing are two regional traditions, and may appeal to those who want something different. Dancers wield swords as they move across the floor. Some troupes now use wooden swords, but the moves are no less intricate and the dance ends with the swords intertwined in a star shape and held aloft to the audience. Most variations originated in north-east England.
- Find a dance fitness class near you at 'exercise move dance' or call 01403 266000
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