Cheerleading, drill team, color guard, gymnastics, baton, even marching bands, ... wow!

Dance Teacher Magazine and its sister magazines, including American Cheerleader and Dance Spirit, provide a superb illustration of contrasting developments in very related industries over the last many years:

Cheerleading, drill team, color guard, gymnastics, baton, .... and other activities have become much more dance-oriented and even dance-based. Even marching bands are more accurately seen as dance-marching bands, or even marching-dance bands.  Let's assume Sousa would hail it.

And, not only have these activities enthusiastically adopted dance-orientation, some to the extent of being dance-based now, they have grown significantly.

It is my contention that these activities have grown so significantly in part because they incorporated dance.

But the organizational factors, the industry factors, were also critical.