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Dancing Craze Sweeps UK After TV Shows
A dance revival is sweeping the UK thanks to TV talent shows.
According to figures from Foundation for Community Dance, nearly five million people are now regularly involved in some sort of dancing, from salsa to street-dance.
TV Shows have put dancing back onto prime time.
But it's not just the retro styles that people want to learn.
On the dancing talent shows like Sky1's Got To Dance, the age range is younger and the styles are more current.
Ashley Banjo fronts the street dance group Diversity, winners of Britain's Got Talent.
Now as a judge of Got To Dance, he's witnessing the revival first-hand.
He said: "I think there's always been a demand for dance but it hasn't been in the mainstream, it hasn't been at the forefront and basically, hasn't been on TV.
"Since shows like Britain's Got Talent, where dancers were winning year after year, people started to notice there's a real demand for dance."
And the revival isn't just anecdotal.
Arts Council figures show that in schools, the number of pupils taking dance at GCSE has risen by 83% in four years.
A third of the entrants are boys. And in further and higher education, demand is up by 97% in five years, to 10,000 students each year.
There's also a surge in demand for tickets to dance shows.
At the UK's most famous dance-based theatre, Sadler's Wells, they've noticed a marked increase.
Alistair Spalding, the theatre's chief executive, said: "We haven't been on such a high for a long time and I'm hoping that will stay.
"It's doubled over the last five years and I think we've now, more or less, reached our capacity here, so we're looking at other areas to go to."
Even the Government is now on the dancing bandwagon - promoting it as a way of people getting fit with its Let's Dance With Change4Life campaign.
But it's not just fitness driving this new appetite for dance - many are discovering that dancing is also fun.
© Sky News 2010
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