Ballroom


I know the situations are different for other parts of the world, but at least in the U.S., most people who take up ballroom dancing are in their middle age.  Possible reasons for it are:

  • Taking dance lessons is time consuming.  Parents with small children who need to juggle their jobs and child-care-related activities simply do not have time to start taking lessons.  Even if they start taking lessons, they tend not to continue lessons because of time constraints. 
  • Dance lessons are expensive.  Dance lessons, especially private lessons, are fairly expensive compared with prices for other activities.  Young adults who just started their career often do not have financial resources for dance lessons.
  • Dance lessons are physically demanding.   Dancing is a physically demanding activity.  According to fitday.com 20 min. of fast ballroom dancing burns 97 calories whereas doing a low impact aerobics 89 calories. One time, I wore a heart rate monitor for my studio’s practice party out of curiosity. When I danced rumba, which is a slow Latin dance, my heart rate went up to 145 BPM. It shot up to 160BPM for one dance of east coast swing. Those are above my target rates for exercise.

 

My observation here is mostly for studio-based dance lessons. Of course, there are gyms, church groups, and senior centers that offer regular dance lessons; however, they are mostly group lessons emphasizing the “fun” part of dancing. Once one crosses-over to the competitve side, namely, pro-am competition, the only age category that have many couples in one heat tend to be ages between 40 and 60.