Dance is defined as: to move one's feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of step, especially to music.

Do you know that every time you dance, you are doing math?

Dancing is moving your body at the rythm of the music. Rythm involves patterns and patterns are MATHEMATICS!

Dance and Math

How is dance related to math?

Rhythm (counting beats)

Dance can be related to the timing of the beat, the number of steps involved in a dance move, the number of parttners involved, the number of instruments that it takes to play the music, the number of choreographers that it took to work out the dance move, etc..

Form
Geometry of lines: Dance requires you to make different shapes and angles with your body. Using symmetry to form formations

Geometry
Dance movement can be all sorts of combinations of circles, points, angles and lines

So there are plenty of ways that we can physically experience (or watch) geometry. All the topics included in dance are:

Shapes:
Dancers are constantly making shapes with their entire bodies. They form simple shapes with their arms and legs such as circles, triangles and lines as well as more complex shapes. Dancers also make different shapes with their formations.

Patterns:
Everything in dance has to do with patterns. Dancers memorize patterns in the steps in their dances. Music usually has a pattern of verse-chorus-verse-chorus that dictate a dancers movement. They also follow a pattern in the music, counting 1-8 over and over.

Parallel Lines:
Dancers often have to think about staying parallel to other dancers to preserve formations. They need to keep the same distance between themselves and the other dancers no matter how they move.

Circles:
This could be as simple as ronde de jambe, or as fluid as all the circles necessary to keep movement smooth.

Angles:
Dancers need to focus on the angles they make with their bodies to form the correct shapes.

These dancers are making right angles with their bodies. You can find the degrees of the angles of their bodies.

This dancer is making a 180 angle with her leg. The

slope of her line is undefined.

The term is called Penche.

This dancer is making a 90 angle with her leg.

This term is called Arabesque

The slope of his line is 0. His arm is making a curved line.

This term is called a Grand Jete

This dancer's leg in making a scalene triangle. Her arms are also making a straight line on an angle.

This term is called Passe.

Tutting
Tutting is a style of dance that is based totally on geometry and patterns and angles, mosty with your arms. Hip hop brought a style of pop locking that involves geometrical movements to form 90 degree angles. This is such a sick style of dance when it's done right. It's pretty crazy how dope it looks.

Symmetry
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Dance can also be very symmetrical. Dancers are constantly moving their bodies across the stage so that it reflects the same consistent pattern. Often, formations in a dance create reflection or rotational symmetry. Also, partner dancing often uses both reflection and rotational symmetry.

The two ballerinas are creating reflection symmetry, with the line of symmetry drawn in pink

The girls are illustrating rotational symmetry, with the point of rotation in the middle of the circle as well as reflection symmetry.

Dancers also have reflection symmetry in their own bodies. The first two images are symmetrical; the third is asymmetrical.

Thanks you for listening

Suzana Paripo