Ask any professional dancer. What does it take to be a dancer?
They will set you straight: Dancing is without a doubt one of the hardest things you can do with your body.
Being a dancer means being not only an athlete, but an actress. Dancing doesn’t just involve one part of your body?it requires your entire body, and your heart and mind, too. Forget having a bad day, or letting your recent breakup or any family problems get you down.
Another challenge dancers face?similar to other professional athletes?is that it takes a tremendous amount of training, work, and discipline to make their performances look flawless. Their audiences, whether on YouTube or television, only see that final performance, which is often rendered with all sorts of glitter and glamour. People don’t see behind the scenes when you’re getting dropped and bleeding and crying. . Dancers are required to push their bodies to limits that are often unnatural, or beyond anything of which they imagined themselves capable.
Dancers on tour with a number of major pop stars, say they remember the days of going to rehearsal for eight hours and then taking dance classes afterwards. When they didn’t have rehearsal, they would sometimes take up to five classes a day. But now, regular rest for both body and mind is a requirement of the job.
The upside? Of course, they love it.
