Dance. For some it’s a professional endeavour. For others, it’s a much loved hobby. And for plenty, it’s something we do in the shower, the kitchen and at family gatherings. However and wherever you dance, we’re a nation that simply loves it.
So we compiled some dance statistics for 2021 to highlight the UK’s love affair with dance.
Dance Statistics in Summary
We’ve packed this piece full of information. But if you want just the quick version, here are our headline findings:
- 42.8% of adults in the UK say dancing makes them feel “happy” or “good”
- Men are twice as likely to feel ‘stupid’ while dancing than women
- Ballet is the UK’s favourite form of dance, followed by Street dance, Contemporary and Belly dancing
Dancing Makes us Happy - It’s Official!
We asked 1,000 adults in the UK (using Google Surveys) to complete the following sentence:
“Dancing makes me…..”
And here is what the Great British population told us.
The single most popular answer was “happy,” followed by “Good.”
And while 6.4% said dancing leaves them “tired,” almost as many (5.1%) said it makes them feel “alive.”
Here are the top responses:
|
Answer |
Proportion of People Who Responded this Way |
| Happy | 26.6% |
| Good | 17.2% |
| Tired | 6.4% |
| Alive | 5.1% |
| Stupid | 2.6% |
| Free | 1.8% |
| Sick | 1.6% |
We’re not surprised that dancing makes so many people feel happy, especially given the many physical and mental health benefits of dance!
Differences Between Men and Women
There are slight variations between genders and age groups:
- “Happy” was the top answer for women (36.5%) and the second answer for men (16.7%)
- Amongst men, “good” topped the list (19.1%) and took second place for women (15.4%)
- Men are twice as likely (3.6% versus 1.7% of women) to say dancing makes them feel “stupid” suggesting men feel more self conscious than women when it comes to dancing
What’s the Most Popular Type of Dance in the UK?
So, we know from our survey that dancing makes so many of us feel happy or just generally good! That doesn’t come as a surprise to use at all.
But which types of dance are the most popular in the UK?
To find out, we took a look at how many searches there are each month in Google UK (with the help of data from kwfinder.com). Here’s what we discovered.
- Ballet is the most popular form of dance in the UK, with the term ‘ballet’ being searched for over 19,000 times a month on average.
- Street dance is the second most popular type of dance, receiving an average of 13,100 searches a month.
- As you can see from the chart, Contemporary dance, Belly dancing and Irish dancing are also searched for thousands of times a month in the UK, as well as Salsa, Ballroom and Breakdancing.
What’s Your Hometown’s Favourite Type of Dance?
For a bit of fun, we thought we’d take a closer look at which types of dance are most popular in each of the UK’s most populous towns and cities.
Our study found that:
- Ballet is the most popular style of dance in the majority of the UK’s most populous towns and cities, with ballet being searched for most in Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh and London.
- However in Leicester and Stoke-on-Trent, Street Dance is the most popular form of dance, receiving the highest proportion of searches each month.
The popularity of each form of dance was calculated by dividing the corresponding search volume by the population of each town or city, which provided us with a weighted value determining the average number of searches per person in said place. These values were based on the assumption that each search was carried by a different individual, which may not have been the case in each instance.
TikTok Dance Trends
As well as more traditional forms of dance, the last few years have also seen a rise in popularity of newer dance trends and moves. Many of these have been shared on various social media platforms, with one in particular - TikTok - becoming widely recognised for its ever-growing selection of viral dance videos.
The umbrella term ‘TikTok dance’ is currently searched for 29,800 times every month on average in the UK. To put this into context, that means that TikTik dance is now being searched for more than 10,000 times a month more than other popular styles of dance such as Ballet, Zumba and Street.
The Most Popular TikTok Dance Trends of 2021
To find out which TikTok dance trends were most popular over the last year, we conducted a Google search analysis using the tool Keyword Finder. The analysis found that:
- The WAP dance is the most searched for TikTok dance online, as it’s searched an average 11,700 times a month in the UK alone.
- As you can see from the graph, Renegade, Blinding Lights, Savage Love and Savage are also searched for thousands of times each month.
The Impact of Coronavirus on the UK Dance Industry
The dance industry relies heavily upon live performances, collaborative efforts and the venues that hold these types of events. Unfortunately the Coronavirus pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on the world of dance, as was revealed in the Office for National Statistics’ most recent report, which found:
- The arts and entertainment industry saw a 44.5% reduction in monthly gross domestic product (GDP) output (according to gross value added (GVA)) in the three months up to June 2020 compared with the three months earlier.
- The National Campaign for the Arts’ most recent Arts Index also found that public investment in arts per person in England has decreased by 35% over the last decade.
- The UK government and various charities, community groups and arts organisations have made a variety of financial support options available to those who’ve been affected by the impact of the pandemic. A guide to each of these types of funding can be found here.
We hope you found these dance statistics interesting and that dancing makes you as happy as it does us!