Dancing is incredibly versatile. Competitively and professionally, it’s a sport and an art form wrapped into one – but it is also letting loose in a club, dancing in your bedroom away from prying eyes, and having a shimmy in the kitchen whilst you cook.
It’s a way to make lifelong friends, to connect with people you don’t share a language with, and to explore yourself in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to.
Newcastle University has its own dance club, with around 400 members – so there’s always someone for everyone. Ballet, jazz, contemporary, street, tap, lyrical, you name it, and they’ve got it.
It’s such a supportive environment, not just from the teachers and the committee, but absolutely everyone around you in class.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been dancing for most of your life or if you’re looking to take up a new hobby, because there’s a class for every skill level. It’s such a supportive environment, not just from the teachers and the committee, but absolutely everyone around you in class. It builds camaraderie when you help each other through choreography and laugh together when something ridiculous happens. It’s a bond that is very rarely broken.
As a girly who dances through the streets to romanticise life, dancing is a great way to just let loose and switch your brain off. You don’t have to join a class either! Book a studio, play music so loudly from the speakers that they can hear you through the walls and create your own piece by letting the music guide you.
Alternatively, join me in looking completely mad and blast an album through your headphones so that you can run through the streets of Newcastle and dance to your favourite music.
It’s a hobby I would absolutely endorse taking up and exploring yourself...
In some ways, dancing is ingrained in all of us, pulled through time from all our heritage. A way to court, to tell tales as old as time, to share culture. It’s a hobby I would absolutely endorse taking up and exploring yourself (not that I’m biased in any way at all, oh no).
What’s the worst that can happen?