Sara DiVittorio - Essay

​Hi! I’m Sara DiVittorio from North Carolina and I will be featured in the 63rd issue of Inspiring Teens Magazine. One topic that I’m very passionate about is the idea of dance as a sport. Dance is generally regarded as an art form and nothing more and although dance is a form of art, it is also a grueling sport that requires mental and more prominently physical work. For all my hard work, it infuriates me for someone to go “Oh I could do that”. Most people don’t understand how incorrect this statement is because they don’t have insight into what it is to be a dancer.

I am an Irish dancer and have been dancing for over 12 years, so let me give you a little bit of background information. For Irish dancing, we put on wigs, makeup, sparkly dresses, which can blind you from what is truly under it all: hard work. I personally spend a minimum of four days of week at dance class and closer to competitions I am in the dance studio just about every day and this doesn’t include the extra work I am doing at home. We, dancers, work our bodies to the point of exhaustion and yet, we are still not considered a sport? In what way is a football player or a soccer player working harder than a dancer? The answer is that they’re not.
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We go up on stage and do what we have worked for the same as someone does on field or court. We practice just as hard and with the same physical effort as those training for their next game. Trust me our ab, leg, and arm workouts are exhausting. We work for hours on end to give our absolute best for only 2 minutes on stage. Yet, dancing is belittled and called not a sport even called easy, just because we do it in makeup and sparkly dresses. Why should our looks affect the status of what we work for? This is why dance is just as much a sport as football or baseball or any other conventional sport that you think of.

I’m so happy to be in the Issue 63 of Inspiring Teen Magazine and I’m very happy that I, Sara DiVittorio from North Carolina, could talk about this topic which I am so passionate about.

Sara DiVittorio – North Carolina
Nomination and Photography by Words & Pictures by Jeannie DeSena