The Development, Reliability and Validity of a Technically Advanced Dance Aerobic Fitness Test (TADAFT) / Nicholas Singh (2025)

Contemporary dance places extraordinary physiological demands on performers, requiring high cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) to sustain technical precision and artistic expression under progressive stress. Despite the growing recognition of dance as both an art form and athletic endeavour, existing fitness assessments lack ecological validity, relying on generic protocols that fail to capture the unique movement patterns and energy system demands of contemporary dance performance. This research addresses these limitations through the development and validation of the Technically Advanced Dance Aerobic Fitness Test (TADAFT), a dance-specific CRF assessment protocol designed for higher-level contemporary dancers. The TADAFT integrates contemporary and modern dance movements into a structured five-stage aerobic protocol that mirrors the technical complexity and choreographic intricacy of professional dance practice. Unlike existing dance fitness tests that emphasize simplified movements, the TADAFT embraces the sophisticated movement characteristic of contemporary dance while maintaining scientific methodology through systematic validation methodology. Through a comprehensive two-phase investigation, this research established both the reliability and validity of the TADAFT. Phase one demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability for heart rate (HR) and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) measures across repeated trials, confirming measurement consistency despite technical complexity. Phase two validated the test against gold-standard treadmill testing, revealing no significant differences in V̇ O₂peak values between TADAFT (45.8 ± 8.82 ml/kg/min) and laboratory protocols (47.2 ± 6.97 ml/kg/min). Progressive blood lactate (BL) accumulation reaching 12.3 ± 0.965 mmol/L at stage 5 confirmed the test’s ability to challenge both aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. Importantly, the TADAFT demonstrated applicability across diverse contemporary dance training backgrounds without physiological bias, supporting its potential as a standardized assessment tool. The research contributes significantly to dance science literature by providing a comprehensively validated dance-specific fitness test that balances ecological validity with measurement rigor, offering dance practitioners an evidencebased tool for fitness assessment, training monitoring, and performance optimization in contexts directly relevant to contemporary dance practice.