Dancing requires strength, speed, and flexibility. For instance, most fast-paced tap dancing requires precise muscle movement, otherwise your feet make the wrong sounds, even if the rhythm of your body feels exact. Tap moves also stack and accelerate while stacking, calling for more focus and precision, which can be frustrating if you’re having trouble trying to nail just one move consecutively, like a Maxie Ford. This isn’t limited to tap. Shaking of the hips, like in Polynesian dancing, requires a lot of strength and flexibility right at the start, and any dancing that requires the body to move onto and off of the floor is going to utilize almost every active muscle area, from legs to upper body. For dancers, strength equates to endurance. The stronger a dancer is, the longer they can repeat their actions with precision and speed.

Replace the word “dancer” in the previous sentence with “swordsman” or “fighter” and the statement remains no less true. So much so that dancing and superior fighting skills have become a common trope in genre fiction. It looks cool to see (or read) a fighter weave around their stronger opponents attacks, and it makes battles more interesting.

Here are a few noteworthy examples of this battle dancing as depicted in sci-fi/fantasy!

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