scientific backup for competitive ballroom dancing!

H

hala

New Member
hi,

I'm preparing a 10 minutes lecture for a class, and my topic is "why is competitive ballroom dancing particularly fit for engineers". I assumed there would be psychology books out there on why this activity attracts the intellectual types (such as engineers), but I couldn't find any.

From observation it shows that the schools strong in technical subjects are also the best at collegiate ballroom, but I need help backing this up. Does anyone know of a reference that talks of the intellectual side of competitive ballroom etc..?

thanks :)
Hala
 
Hi hala. Welcome to the forums. :D

There are tons of scientists, engineers and other intellectual types hanging around the forums. I hope you'll get some good references (I'll google and look around, of course :wink: :D ) I KNOW you'll get some interesting speculation. :shock: :lol: Does that count?

I noticed the same thing at a couple different ballroom studios -- a disproportionate number of engineering types. Why? Don't know.
 
Compare the ISTD book to the programmer's manual for a simple microprocessor.

Just make side by side overheads from sample pages - dance figure with timing, footwork, amounts of turn vs. instruction mnemonic with clock cycles, registers, affected flags...
 
Ah yes. My first google of the day. :) Did you know there's a field of psychology called performance art psychology? I didn't. You learn something every day.

Anyway, according to this psychologist, performing arts such as dance require concentration, focus, and attention to detail. Sounds like the characteristics of a scientist to me. Hmm. (And I know this is off-topic, but how is that different from non-performance art?)


w w w.health-helper.com/psychology/psy-pa.html
 
I wasn't aware of any scientific facts about dance in particular, but it has been long recognized that musical understanding is a benefit to learning.

Last year, a music teacher I know did a bunch of research on this topic. One article that provides some good facts is http://www.menc.org/information/advocate/facts.html.

Since dance is also closely associated with a better appreciation of and understanding of music, there are certainly some similarities, though this can only be used as oblique supporting evidence, not direct evidence. Still, it might help you make your case.
 
Darn... where's the link to that Time magazine article about dancing helping to reduce memory loss.... darn it... it's posted in the dance studio where I take ballroom. If I find the ref on it...
 
etchuck said:
Darn... where's the link to that Time magazine article about dancing helping to reduce memory loss....
Click to expand...
:uplaugh: :uplaugh: :uplaugh: Maybe, if you danced more .... you'd remember!

(Sorry, that one was to ironically funny to just ignore.)

Anyways, about the question, I have no such thing as any scientific references, but I can offer speculation. :headwall:

The intelectual side of learning to dance has been mentioned. There are details to learn, remember and focus on, also there are 3D movements to visualize and execute. So for the sake of learning, being focused and a bit methodological helps. Also it takes time to learn to dance, so having patience when learning helps. I think that is also a quality you'll find in engineers and scientist.

From a social viewpoint, one may speculate wether scientist and engineers also look more for goal-oriented activities than the average person. Learning to dance offers the goal of learning something while exercising. And this may be more stimulating to someone who does thinking for a living. And dancing may be a more meaningful way of going out and having fun, than just getting drunk and thrashing about without goal or meaning :D

But hey, this is all speculating :D
 
Larinda McRaven said:
Hala, feel free to contact Professor Laws, he works at Dickinson College. I am sure he can be an invaluable source of information. Anyone else that is up for a challenge could contact him also, or at least go get his two books that are still in print. The books have become required reading material for the majority of my students.
Click to expand...

Barnes and Noble has Professor Laws' books, and a few others that look interesting. I googled engineering and dance, and got a nice, long results page. 8)
 
thanks for all the help!

Thanks for all the helpfull replies. When i searched on google I entered "ballroom dance" instead of "dance", and got no results the first time. When I use "dance" & "engineering" I got a lot of the results you entered. The comments you all made are also very useful to me. I'm looking forward to presenting my findings in class!

I am an ag engineer and a ballroom dancer myself (bronze level).

thanks again :)

Hala
 
(Pardon all of the generalizations, but hey I'm one of these enginerds!)

In my experience, the amount of guys from a technical field that are prevalent in a dance scene is much higher than a normal sampling of society-at-large.

Technical types like dancing because of the initial "cookbook" way that it is taught. There's a certain amount of physical awkwardness that can be associated with technical folk, but we're quite good with a "Follow the instructions" methodology. The more technically specific, the better.

Add to it that a lot of technical fields are male dominated, and that dancing offers a way for a typically shy male enginerd to interact with women without having to chat them up or buy them drinks like your traditional bar scene. It all adds up to the large numbers of men from technology. (e.g. in Seattle, I've met about 1/2 dozen men who work at Microsoft, only one woman; in Denver, about a dozen guys I know are in technical fields. Maybe 3-4 women.)
 
pygmalion said:
Check out this article about an engineer who tossed it all, so to speak, to go dance and sing on Broadway.
Click to expand...

Hehe. Quite the April Fool's joke, that article.
 
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