Ballet, hip hop, Irish dance, cheer & pom, acrob
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Anonymous
My kid swims and dances. They are very complimentary disciplines. She tried a bunch of different stuff when she was in early elementary and those are the two she loved the most. I tried to get her into tennis because I love it, but it's just not her thing. She might give it another shot in middle school. There's a lot about dance that is just generally beneficial as well as useful in other sports. You learn a lot about music and it can be a beneficial practice to playing an instrument because of what you learn about pace and quality of the music. Ballet as a discipline trains you to isolate and develop muscle groups and then put them together in increasingly more complex movement -- the body awareness and understanding of how power is transferred in jumps and turns translates into a lot of athletic disciplines (I danced as a child and picked up tennis as an adult -- my coach always compliment me on my balance and footwork). Dancing with others teaches spatial awareness and synchronization, which are fairly advanced athletic skills. To OP, I'd say that 7 is a good age to sample a variety of different styles of dance and see what she likes. If she really enjoys dancing, I would enroll her in ballet because it's foundational and will help her in all other dance disciplines. Another thing to think about is if she wants to focus on competition or not. My daughter doesn't do competitive dance, she trains at a ballet studio and performs in recitals twice a year. She likes class and learning longer performance pieces over a longer period, and she is not interested in head to head competition in dance (she gets that in swimming, dance is a bit of a refuge from that competition). But some kids like the competition aspect and like learning the shorter competition pieces and like the focus on learning specific tricks that is more common on competition teams. Competition dance often requires a major time commitment though (and is pricy) so take that into consideration. Lots of non-white, non-Irish kids do Irish dance, btw. It's a very competition-focused discipline, and they tend to do a lot of exhibitions, so it's good for a kid who really likes performing. But it doesn't transfer as well to other styles and is kind of its own thing, so I'd only do it if your kid just loves it. Otherwise I'd stick with more transferable styles like ballet, jazz, or acro. |
Anonymous
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There’s even more ignorant posters given their opinions that they know nothing about than usual. I can only imagine there’s not a whole lot of culture in these households.
To the OP, rhythmic gymnastics is very difficult to do and the girls are usually tiny and flexible. The rest of the styles would be fine. There should be some recreational studios that offer every style. She can try them all and see what she likes. Don’t assume your daughter won’t want to study ballet professionally or she might stay with hip hop dance styles that can bring opportunities to dance through adulthood. As for the person who said “put them in tennis or swim” dancers know how to swim and play tennis. Those are easy skills to master recreationally. Dance is a life long enjoyable activity you can use your whole life. |
Anonymous
They are not. It's just what pom moms tell themselves to feel better. |
Anonymous
| Ballroom! |
Anonymous
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Ballet is best started young. You learn natural
Grace and coordination that is easily transferable to other dance forms |
Anonymous
2 completely different sports. Poms is dance. Cheer has tumbling, stunts, and some dance. In general, the girls with a dance background, do poms in high school and the girls with the gymnastics background, do cheerleading. |
Anonymous
The opposite. Women enjoy these activities more. Men do them to please women. |
Anonymous
Ask an actual dancer if poms is dance. You will be laughed out of the room. |
Anonymous
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Irish dancers ARE usually skinny and tall!
I agree that age 7 is perfect for experimenting. If I were you, I'd find a local (non-competitive or lite competitive) dance school where she could do ballet and jazz, or hip hop and jazz. Ballet is the best foundation, but the most "serious." If you had enough time in your week, and enough desire, tack on Irish. Try this for a year and see what she's liking. My daughter was a mediocre dancer, but found that she loved the acro skills in her jazz class. So she picked up gymnastics and had a good run with that -- wound up competing for a few years, though she was technically "late" to the sport. |
Anonymous
I don't get why you are so bitter. There are so many types of dance and Poms is one of them. But for OP, most Poms on high level teams have spent many years in a dance studio and some Poms go on to compete on college dance teams (or poms teams or club dance or poms). Poms is like a synchronized dance team. In order to make a team, the athlete has to have certain dance move skills and a lot of flexibility. The competition rules for Poms differ from the competition rules for cheer. PP who compared cheer to gymnastics has pretty much captured a big difference in the rules. Poms do not do stunts like cheerleaders do. Both require the competitor to have good athletic skills and a lot of stamina. But they are very different. |
Anonymous
You’re not a dancer are you. That’s not accurate. At all. |
Anonymous
| If ballet is in the mix, I'd start that young. You can branch into other dance types like tap and contemporary with that as a base skill. My DD loved acro but it was really a substitute for gymnastics. Gymnastics is a good sport to complement diving if that is something she might like in the future. |
Anonymous
While many Irish dancers are skinny and tall, you certainly don’t need to be. My daughter is neither. I love the community at her school bc it emphasizes anyone can do Irish dance and doesn’t press competition. Also love that there are no mirrors and no skin tight clothes so she doesn’t spend her time staring at and feeling bad about her body. |
Anonymous
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Ballet is a great foundation for any other type of dance. Please ignore the posters claiming the culture is toxic etc. There are crazy cultures at the high levels of any youth activity but your daughter is young. My own daughters love ballet, they attend a local studio that emphasizes ballet for recreation, not pre-professional training, and they participate in a few fairly low-key performances a year.
Irish dance -- they tried it, it was fun, but Irish is its own universe that can revolve around the competition -- i.e. feis -- circuit, and we found it was difficult to do much of it just at the recreational level. |
Anonymous
| I saw Native American girls and African American girls performing Irish dance out west. |