Persuasive Speech: Dance

For this speech I have decided to do a topic on something I have a strong passion for.  I wanted to see how my delivery would be effected if I was talking about something I knew a lot about.  Although it was a topic that I had lots of information about, I found that the hardest thing about this speech was to figure out what to say about dancing that would interest people who don't have any experience in dance at all.  I felt that many of the topics I was talking about applied more to people who dance or want to get more serious about dancing instead of targeting non-dancers.  To avoid the audience from losing interest, I tried to make the delivery a bit more dynamic and added a handful of visual aids.  Regarding visual aids, when I first decided to do the topic of dance, I told myself to not rely on dancing.  This idea seemed like a double-edged sword where I was able to do a speech rather than a performance, however my audience probably expected dancing right when they hear the topic.

For my three main points of discussion were, in order of presentation: dance carries emotion, the different textures of movement, and the moves that make up dancing.  I decided that these topics together were the best thing to talk about because personally I found these topics to not be common knowledge about dance but at the same time should be common knowledge for anyone wanted to know more about dance.

Another hard thing about this speech was finding appropriate academic sources.  While looking for dance specific research, I found practically nothing.  Because of this, I decided to turn towards psychology research done with the use of dance.  Due to the situation, I thought this to be the most appropriate substitute.

When I finally got up there to do the actual speech, I felt less nervous than normal.  After being up there a couple of times it definitely gets easier.  In terms of delivery, I felt my words carry more confidently and in turn made me seem more credible.  Something I found interesting was that as a dancer doing choreography I feel comfortable letting moves go one after another without even thinking too much.  When I used my visual aids, it acted as cues and the next time to say in my speech automatically popped into my mind.

In conclusion, I'd say this was the most enjoyable speech to make so far due to the topic.  I felt more comfortable speaking about something I have lots of personal knowledge about and using visual aid such as dancing made me feel more in place then having to speak for the whole time.