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.
Back in 2021, we commissioned a survey to highlight the UK’s love affair with dance. In addition to the survey, we have compared Google keyword data from 2021 to 2025 to get a view of the changes in popularity of types of 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 were each month in March 2021 and February 2025 in Google UK (with the help of data from kwfinder.com). Here’s what we discovered.
- Ballet remains the most popular form of dance in the UK, with the term ‘ballet’ being searched ove 18,000 times in March 2021 and increasing to over 22,000 in 2025.
- Street dance has been overtaken in second place by Irish dance, which is now the second most popular type of dance, receiving around 8,100 searches a month, even though this represents a decrease in the number of searches from March 2021.
- Belly dancing, contemporary dance, ballroom and flamenco all had at least 5,000 searches each month in the UK in February 2025.
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 regions.
Our study found that:
- Ballet is the most popular search term throughout the whole of the UK. It is the top searched term in each region except forNorthern Ireland, where Irish Dance is the most searched for
- London is in top place for pretty much all the different dance search terms except for Irish Dancing and Country Dancing.
Check out our interactive map below to find out how popular each type of dance is in your region:
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
The umbrella term ‘TikTok dance’ was searched around 29,800 times every month on average in 2021 in the UK, these search numbers have fallen gradually over the last 4 years with it now being searched only around 4,300 times per month in the UK in 2025.
To put this into context, this still means that TikTik dance is now being searched for more than many established dances such as tap, hip-hop and jazz, each of which has less than 4,000 searches per month in the UK.
The Impact of Coronavirus on the UK Dance Industry and how it has recovered.
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. However, since 2020, Music, performing and visual arts have grown from £7.6 billion GDP to £11.2 billion (a 48% increase), which is the highest it has been since before 2010.
- The National Campaign for the Arts’ most recent State of the Arts report also found that public investment in culture in England has decreased by 48% between 2009 and 2023..
- 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!