Lyrical dance facts for kids

Lyrical dance is a cool dance style that mixes parts of ballet, jazz, acrobatics, and modern dance. It combines the careful moves of ballet with the freedom and musicality of jazz and contemporary dance.

Lyrical dance often shows clear feelings and uses quick, exciting moves. Dancers focus on showing off their skills and telling a story with the song's words. When groups dance, they often move together perfectly. This style is usually a bit faster than ballet but not as fast as jazz. You'll often see lyrical dance in dance competitions.

History of Lyrical Dance

It's a bit tricky to find out exactly where lyrical dance started because it's mostly used in dance competitions. However, experts have a few ideas about its beginnings.

One idea, from Jimmy Peters, is that lyrical dance grew from the "dream ballet" parts in musicals like Oklahoma! and West Side Story. Another idea, from Chelya Clawson, suggests the term might come from traditional Indian dance from the 1500s.

The most likely idea comes from Phyllis Balanga-Demoret. She believes lyrical dance began about 25 years ago. This was because ballet, even though it's a classic style, wasn't often performed in dance competitions. Lyrical dance filled this gap, becoming a popular style for competitive stages.

A dancer, teacher, and choreographer named Suzi Taylor is seen by many as an early leader in lyrical dance. She taught classes in New York City and focused on unique ways to express music and feelings. Her ideas influenced many future teachers and choreographers.

Over time, lyrical dance has changed. In its early days, dancers would act out the exact words of a song, showing clear emotions. Today, lyrical dance still focuses on showing feelings, but in a more creative and abstract way. It's a place for new and stylish moves, often linked to contemporary dance. Dancers perform to music with lyrics, letting the song's feelings inspire their movements. Because expressing strong emotion is key, lyrical dance focuses more on a dancer's personal style and feelings than on perfect, exact movements. The choreography often acts more like a guide than a strict routine.

Style or Technique?

Because lyrical dance borrows from other styles, teachers first wondered if they should teach it with jazz or ballet, or as its own separate style. A big question about lyrical dance is whether it's a "style" or a "technique."

Some people have called lyrical dance a "pseudostyle" or "pseudogenre." This is because it uses steps and training from other, more established dance styles. Lyrical dance uses moves from jazz technique, ballet, and modern dance as its base. These well-known movements are often stretched out, moved off-center, or changed to create a new look in lyrical dance.

Even though some dance studios offer "lyrical technique" classes, there isn't really a separate lyrical technique. A dancer can't be good at lyrical dance without knowing and mastering the basic techniques from jazz, ballet, and modern dance.

Lyrical Dance in Popular Culture

Lyrical dance is mainly a style used in the world of competitive dance. In other dance settings, the word "lyrical" might describe a certain quality or type of movement, but not a whole style like Jazz or Ballet.

There has only been one time that "lyrical" was used as a specific style in a professional TV show. This was on Season 1 of the popular American dance show So You Think You Can Dance. Contestants on this show competed in many different styles, including ballroom, hip-hop, jazz, and lyrical.

However, in Season 2 of the show, the term "lyrical" was changed to "contemporary." This change was likely made to make the show seem more professional. Even with the name change, the types of dances performed in this style remained very similar.