Dancing is considered as a healthy form of exercise, but many perceive it as some bad influences in the society.

Dancing can be classified into a wide range of categories, and to further understand each category of dance, let’s look at some of the most popular dance categories explained below:

Belly Dance

Belly Dancing is a sensual “body talking” dance. Belly dancers internalize and express the emotions evoked by the music. The most admired belly dancers are those who can best project their emotions through dance, even if their dance is made up of simple movements. The dancer’s goal is to visually communicate to the audience the emotion and rhythm of the music.

The benefits of belly dance are both mental and physical. It emphasizes on abdominal muscles, hip moves, and chest moves. It is firm and earthy, with bare feet connected to the ground. It is a dance characterized by smooth, flowing, complex, and sensual movements of the upper body, alternated with shaking and shimmy type moves. Belly dance is suitable for all ages and body types.

Belly dance gives you the opportunity to gain self confidence, explore the many unique techniques of your personality, escape from your everyday life and discover the rare beauty of your body. It is gaining popularity among men and women who want to lose weight.

Break Dance

Break dance is a street dance style that evolved as part of the hip hop movement that originated among African American youths in New York City in early 1970s. B-boying was a positive way for the youth to express them self through music instead of violence. The dance consists of Toprocks – the upright dance form, 2nd Footwork – the dance on the floor, 3rd Power moves- the dynamic movement, and the finally The freeze. B-boying is not just a dance it is also a culture and a lifestyle that is very important to the elements of real Hip Hop.

Since its inception, break dancing has provided a youth culture constructive alternative to violent urban street gangs. Today, break dancing culture is a remarkable discipline somewhere in-between those of dancers and athletes. Since acceptance and involvement centers on dance skills, break dancing culture is usually free of the common race, gender and age boundaries of a subculture and has seen accepted worldwide.

Hip-Hop

Hip Hop is a creative form of street dance that consists of various fast paced choreographed routines. It helps build strength, stamina, coordination, and muscle memory. It is a very fun and energetic dance that has become very popular now in music videos, movies and many other types of performances.

In the 1990s, as hip hop music evolved, it got slower, heavier and more aggressive. This modern hip hop music has given birth to new styles of hip hop dancing, many of them focusing on upright dancing as opposed to break dancing which is better known for its floor-oriented movements. Many of the newer styles are a common sight in today’s music videos on television channels such as MTV.

Salsa

Salsa is a combination of vibrant and smooth rhythmic movements. It is danced to different types of lively and vigorous Latin beats. It’s very essential part of the Latin culture and originated from African, Caribbean and Spanish regions. The word is the same as the Spanish word salsa meaning sauce. It is associated with the words HOT & SPICY.

Ballroom Dance

Ballroom dance refers collectively to a set of partner dances, which originated in the Western world and are now enjoyed both socially and competitively around the globe.

The term “ballroom dancing” is derived from the world “ball”, which in turn originates from the Latin word “ballare” which means “to dance”. In times past, ballroom dancing was “social dancing” for the privileged, leaving “folk dancing” for the lower classes. These boundaries have since disappeared and it is now a dance enjoyed by many regardless of their social standings.

Line Dance

Line dance is a formation dance in which a group of people dance in one or more lines, executing the same movements. In this parallel line formation, the dancers dance in a synchronized manner, but independently of each other. Line dancing today has changed, with the main bulk of the dancing done in pop music. It has created a renewed interest for people of all ages.

Contemporary Dance

Contemporary Dance is a collection of systems and methods developed from Modern and Post-modern dance, thus it is not a specific dance technique. European, American and Asian contemporary dance differ from each other in a number of ways, including techniques, training styles etc.

Given its post-modern lineage Contemporary Dance takes on many forms including dance fusion, emergent dance and revisionism. Contemporary Dance as a field is more concerned with examining the choreographic and performing process and is still in the path of developing philosophies of movement based on study of the human body and body/mind inter-relationships.