The dance in the context of fitness culture: art teaching or killer workout?

Abstract

Dance is an artistic language, a cultural manifestation of all peoples and civilizations. In the context of fitness culture, dance is co-opted and reduced to the category of physical activity, which is endorsed by the WHO and many researchers in the field. In this essay-denunciation, we seek to problematize this situation by scrutinizing the main fitness dance programs currently circulating on the market and on social media. The advertising campaigns for these programs, whose clear purpose is to workout out and losing weight, insist on promoting their products as dance classes, which seems to go against the concept of teaching and learning, given that those responsible for this work are fitness instructors and not educators. The issue of the musical repertoire used in fitness dance sessions was also investigated, as well as the marketing of joy and well-being, and the Childhood as a target market for dance fitness programs.