What Makes Latin Dance Popular - Research Paper Example

Factors That Make Latin Dance Popular INTRODUCTION There are numerous ways in which people express their cultures, interests, and ways of thinking. Music and dancing are just but some of the many ways of achieving this. Over time, the Latin dance has become popular across different cultures in Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world (Blanchard 2005). In other words, the dance’s popularity has become widespread. This makes it an interesting and significant area of study. On this note, the following research questions were developed to guide the study: One, how popular is Latin dance? This will be determined by the proportion of the study sample that knows about the dance in question. Two, what other forms of dances do people prefer apart from Latin dance? Third, does dancing have significant benefits? Finally, what are the other factors that attract people towards dancing? Therefore, this research paper maintains that Latin dance is popular and aims at examining the factors that popularize it. LITERATURE REVIEW It is argued that since ancient times, dancing was an important aspect of the colonial Latin Americans (Blanchard 2005). As earlier mentioned, people use music and dances to express their cultures and belief. According to Blanchard (2005) dancing in Latin America was given pre-eminence in crucial cultural practices such as formal balls, church processions, celebrations of royal births, and the ascension of new monarchs among others. Latin dances take different forms and names, most of which are danced in pairs (Mikhailov and Rashack 2010). Some of them include salsa, rhumba, tango, calypso, cha-cha, bolero, and limbo just to mention a few. According to firmat (2008), in the 1930s, a new type of music called the latune was introduced in the American popular culture. This is a tune composed of an English-language lyric with a Latin beat and drew primarily on boleros and rhumba genres. Maraz, Király, Urbán, Griffiths, and Demetrovics (2015) conducted a study on why people dance that aimed at determining the development of dance motivations of participants. The study entailed the completion of an online survey that pooled together a study sample of 447 ballroom and/or salsa dancers. The researchers employed an exploratory factor analysis and a Dance Motivation Inventory (DMI) to establish the eight motivational factors that were revealed by the sample size. Their study findings show that dancing is a prevalent form of physical exercise and that it helps to improve psychological wellbeing, improve one’s self-esteem and decrease anxiety. More notably, the study revealed that mood enhancement was the strongest driving force for both male and female dancers. Others include fitness, socializing, fitness, escapism, self-confidence, trance, as well as mastery. It, therefore, becomes evident that motivation significantly determines people’s preference of one dance over the other. On this note, this research paper briefly looks at other dance types that the study sample may be involved in apart from Latin dance. They include Hip-hop, k-pop, breakdance, modern dance, causal and others. The current research, therefore, builds upon Maraz et al.’s (2015) study in determining the connection between Latin dance’s popularity and various motivational factors that may have in one way or the other contributed to its popularity. METHODOLOGY This is a deductive research. Latin dance has increasingly become popular across non-Latin cultures. According to Marat et al.’s (2015) theory, dances become popular because of the positive motivations and experiences attributed and derived from them respectively. A Mixed-method methodology will be used in the collection of data that will then be analysed and used to assess the extent to which it supports the hypothesis. On this note, the qualitative and quantitative research methods will be used concurrently so as to derive the most useful results that will then be used to make generalizations about the larger population. Qualitative research explores the underlying motivations, reasons, and opinions that guide the participants. On the other hand, a quantitative research method enables the researcher to collect and analyze statistic data that can be used to make generalizations for the entire study population. For this reason, the researcher employs principles of both research methods to arrive at a more comprehensive conclusion. A sample of 50 respondents is randomly selected to represent the larger student population. It is comprised of 60% female and 40% male, that is, female to male in the ratio of 30:20. To collect the data, a link to the questionnaire was shared online, and respondents were required to answer all the questions provided or tick where applicable. Acceptance of a respondent’s feedback was solely dependent upon completion of the questionnaire. Structurally, open and close-ended questions were included in the questionnaire. The close-ended questions were included, more specifically, to determine whether respondents had previously participated in any form of Latin dance. The close-ended questions were also used to determine whether the participants had a clear knowledge of the historical background of the dance in question. According to Maraz et al. (2015), the choice to participate in a dance varies across people and gender. For this reason, the open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire with the aim being to collect more personalized data from the respondents. The survey questions are numbered 1-15. Given the time as well as budget constraints, the researcher opted for this form of data collection because it not only saves time but also involves relatively fewer expenses. On the same note, this form of data collection would give the researcher more time to concentrate on each of the responses provided. This would come in handy in the analysis stage. That notwithstanding, this form of data collection ensured that only willing participants would respond and thus increased the chances of getting a more credible feedback from each respondent. To ensure that ethical standards were maintained in the study process, respondents were not required to provide their personal identification details. This ensures that all the respondents remain anonymous and thus increases the credibility of the feedback given and received. On the same note, none of the questions were formed with a particular culture in mind. Therefore, all the queries were unbiased, professionally, and ethically formulated to ensure that all the ethical standards were met. The respondents were also required to participate voluntarily and be of age with 18-years being the minimum age limit for this research study. RESULTS The fifty respondents who made up the sample size were aged between 18-25 years. According to the findings, it became evident that dancing is an essential aspect of people’s lives and lifestyles. On this note, it was revealed that 66% of the study sample knew Latin dance while 34% did not know much about it. However, both groups participated in one form of dancing or the other. On this note, 26% of the respondents who responded to the question cited that apart from Latin dance, they engaged in ballet dancing, 22% preferred hip-hop, 18% preferred K-pop and causal dancing respectively, 14% chose modern dancing while 2% participated in other forms of dancing other than the above. The study’s findings affirmed the claims made by Maraz et al. (2015) that dancing is essential for one’s health and psychological well-being. On this note, 98% of the study sample were convinced that Latin dance and some other forms of dancing are good for health, and only a mere 2% had a contrary opinion. On the same note, the study showed that the health factor was more important than all the other possible benefits related to dancing; with 52% citing that no other supersedes that of health. It also became evident that there are different levels of popularizing Latin dance. On this note, the larger part of the population acknowledged that they had first learnt about Latin dance from the television. Others heard from their peers while others learned about it either from teachers, parents or on a random basis. To find out the various factors that drive people to dance the findings indicated that 38% were influenced by friends; 20% by their health consciousness; and 14% by role models. Similarly, 16% were influenced by the beliefs that it enables them to build their self-confidence while 16% cited other reasons such as parents’ influence, hobbies, desire to meet new people participating in the dance, self-interest, and fun just to mention a few. CONCLUSION It has become apparent that Latin is popular amongst young people in their twenties. Evidence shows that Latin dance is popular because people perceive it as a way to boost their physical and health well-being. On the same note, its popularity is influenced by the fact that it enables people to socialize and interact, and in the process make new friends along the way. However, one of the barriers that may have undermined the results of this study was the fact that not all the respondents knew about Latin dance. This, therefore, weakens the hypothesis that Latin dance has become popular. But all in all, the greater number knows about it, and 98% of the sample believe that it has a health benefit. Therefore, the researcher’s perception that Latin dance is popular remains unchanged. However, it might be advisable to consider a quota sampling method in the future with the aim of examining and determining the dance’s popularity trend over time as this was not possible in the current study. The findings of this study will be used to inform future research studies on this and other related concepts. References Blanchard, P. (2005). National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance. 52(3), p.650. Firmat, G.P. (2008). LATUNES. US: Columbia University, 43(2), p.80-203. Maraz A, Király O, Urbán R, Griffiths MD, Demetrovics Z (2015) Why Do You Dance? Development of the Dance Motivation Inventory (DMI). PLoS ONE 10(3): e0122866. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0122866 Mikhailov, V. and Raschack, C. (2010). Anthropometrical and sport constitutional comparison of male and female ballroom-and latin-dancers with regard to different performance levels. 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