Each variety of dance is supported by a technique that needs to be mastered by dancers. These techniques have been refiner, sometimes over hundreds of years, to create an ideal of beauty. To achieve this ideal, some dancers dedicate their lives to dance, learning their skills though discipline and years of training, starting in childhood.

In classic ballet, dancers have to be elegant, long-limbed and flexible. Although they need amazing stamina every movement must appear effortless. Ballet dancers, no matter how exalted their position in the company, attend daily classes to keep their bodies in peak condition and to maintain control over their muscles and movements.

Most dance styles are about the way dancers use their feet. Whether by special shoes or left free, dancers’ feet determine their basic postures and movements of a dance.

The development of ballet shoes shows how footwear and dance styles influence each other. Until the 1810s ballerinas wore simple slippers and kept the balls of their feet in contact with the floor.

Break dancing required an almost gymnastics level of physical ability and became popular with professional choreographers for movies and music videos. Soon break dancing became a major cultural development in popular dance. Break dancing developed on the streets of New York City and spread to other major cities such as Los Angeles.

Tap dancing came from the combination of an Irish jig and an ancient African dance step called the giouba or juba. The origins of tap dancing go back to the dance styles of William Henry “Master Juba” Lane.

Tap dancing came about through the cultural interchange between African Americans and Irishmen in New York City’s Five Points district. Lane learned clog dancing at Irish social parties and became known as a “jing dancer.”