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MOVIESDancing: Is It Really That Fun?
Females appear to be the ones that enjoy dancing the most. For many, it is the sole reason for going out at night. They instinctively have a strong grasp of the specific moves that correspond with a given song. For them, it does not get old. More often than not, their male counterparts are significantly less capable on the dance floor. The unnamed young man, who female sources indicate is an outstanding lover, was never taught the proper technique:
“There’s a lot to consider when dancing with a girl. Do I put my junk right up against her butt? What if it’s hard? Does she want it to be hard? Is this how I prove that I have a penis? Which part of her body should I grope? Do I go low if she goes low? The thought process alone is exhausting.”
The majority of dancers only have a handful of specific moves stored in their memory. Some people believe there are racial predispositions for dancing, but there is no conclusive. Things get interesting when dancers fully commit to the song and improvise their routine. It works for some, but for others it results in a lot of flailing. The young subject of this piece, who is fully capable of growing a full, masculine beard, but chooses to have bare patches, has trouble when straying from his scripted program:
“I get bored 50 seconds into the song. By then, I’ve proven to myself and everyone around me that I can perform a repeated motion. The most embarrassing thing is when I have just picked up the rhythm of a song’s verse only to lose it the second the chorus kicks in. Looking back, I am surprised girls humor me as long as they do. It is really disappointing to see the look of ‘I should have moved on to the next guy 3 songs ago.’”
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the young man is me. Everything mentioned in this article is true. Everything. There is no way that dancing can possibly be as fun as everyone pretends it is. Yet, we let the practice live on because it is tradition. We are afraid to imagine a world without it. My wish is that we can arrive at a point where people can socialize in a quiet room and talk about their lives with very minimal movement. Only then will we be able to look back at our nights out and not feel so douchey.
Thane Economou, Jeff Lutz, and Audrey Webster contributed to this article
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You realize that the main anthropological purpose of dancing is to show off symmetry and perfection of form, thereby, improving your attractiveness as a potential mate. In addition, recent research has shown that only animals capable of speech (humans and a few birds) have the ability to actually plan movements to conicide with rythms. So, dance and language seem to be hardwired together. As for the fun aspects, dancing is a social event. One has only to look at the numerous dance videos on YouTube to understand this. Even when we dance “privately,” we often like share the experience. The fact that in many cultures dancing is very much a male bonding ritual. Historically, male group dancing was a very important. One has only to look at the Bolsheviks or Scotting sword dancing. I see this element reasserting itself in the dance videos created by soldiers deployed about the world. I suspect that your discomfort in dancing is because you do not connect strongly with either the anthropological or social reasons for dancing.
@Ellen - you can find “supposedly” scientific explanations for everything if you look hard enough. The “evolutionary” role of X (X= Speech, Society, Dancing… and so forth) is especially easy to speculate upon since the opinions on the subject can’t be 100% scientifically discredited, hence there will always be people believing them. That being said, as a male, I fail to see anything but an intense craving for sexual encounters when I look at most “modern” dancing done by females (see hip-hop videos and the discos). It is true, dance used to be an art for, back in the day when people still danced waltz and the likes. However nowadays it’s just an excuse for a public display of sexual behavior.
In conclusion, as the brilliant creator of this article also led me to conclude… Dancing sucks.