Youth Competitive Dancing

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Going back to the issue on youth competitive dancers practicing for 30 hours a week and constantly training. I found an article from the New York Times, "Inside the High-Drama World of Youth Competition Dance", that covers this same issue. Being that there are other articles on this topic shows the wide range of problem this issue causes. It is happening in various locations.

In this article, the author Lizzie Feidelson, focuses on a dancer named Angelina Velardi, who is a 12-year-old competitive dancer for the Prestige Academy of Dance. This article shows focus on the high intensity of stress and anxiety these youth dancers experience. The author mentions, Angelina practicing to herself in the corner before going on to perform by herself because of all the anxiety with practicing with other girls she is constantly around. This focuses on how practicing for extraneous hours consecutively with the same people, proves that after a while you get anxiety being around them.

This article also shifts focus on Angelina almost passing out right before having to perform. And she could not tell her coach she did not want to perform because one person can affect the whole routine. Angelina not wanting to tell her coach that she almost passed out while rehearsing shows that these youth who compete have an extensive amount of reliance on their shoulders. Unnecessary stress they have to deal with at such a young age. Being how old Angelina is, she is too afraid to ask her coach to sit out because of all the repercussions that will come with it.

Showing this behind the scene of all the hard work that goes on behind closed doors, really opens your eyes on all the stress these youth dancers encounter. These girls mention that they practice every day of the week when they are not competing. And when they do compete, they are at competition all weekend long which starts the earliest at 7am and ends around 1am. However, not all competitions are the same, but most of them rely around that time frame.

Youth dancers should not be faced with training for the number of hours they are. Bringing awareness on this topic and how it negatively affects the youth is an issue that needs to have light shine upon on it.
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