Having a lapsed Presbyterian as a parent, I've been told more than once that there's a saying at some Baptist schools Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire."" I must have the blood of some of these buttoned-down Gentiles in my veins because even though my childhood could hardly have been more irreverent, I seem to have internalized that motto. For years, anyone watching me express myself vertically through dancing could have interpreted that horizontal desire as either ""sleep"" or ""some kind of paralyzing fear that must be experienced horizontally.""
It still doesn't make sense to me, but though I could scream along with the radio in front of my carpool, I froze like Han Solo at every dance between grades six and 11. In grade school, even my Hokey Pokey was lame.
How then am I able to stand now in a crowded room and shake what little God gave me with abandon? It's been a long and difficult road but I've conquered my inhibitions and good social graces and would like to take a moment to reflect on my obstacles, observations and on what to do with one's elbows.
Self-critical people are always drawing comparisons between themselves and others. When these comparisons are made to things in the media they tend to become unflattering, since many famous things are famous for being good. This makes daytime talk shows popular self-esteem boosters but is frequently discouraging, particularly when comparing one's own awkward gyrations to old episodes of ""Soul Train."" You could flip over to PBS' ""Boohbah"" for a more realistic standard against which to measure your locomotive prowess, or you could just screw the whole idea of coordinated dance moves.
Choreographed dance routines and styles are kind of useless outside of stage shows and pep rallies, anyway. You could spend months learning all the moves to ""Thriller"" and you'd only really be able to dust it off once a year at Halloween. Unless you're a character in a Jane Austen novel, the waltz isn't really where it's at either.
Dancing isn't about who leads or dropping it like it's hot. It's about a look of pained concentration and rigid control of the elbows.
People tend to believe dancing to impress involves some great feats of skill, when in fact you barely even have to manage average ones. All you need is to dress all right and look like you know what you're doing. Since it often takes a while to get comfortable with that second part you might find that you have to use fake competence for some time - this is fine. Surprisingly, this actually gets easier the more exaggerated and outlandish your dancing is.
The most convincing dancers I know are people who dance not only to liberate the soul but also to threaten those around with grievous injury. This approach might get you thrown out of clubs, but so will bringing in outside beverages or fiddling with the sound system (two more compelling reasons to stick to parties). Ideally, after practicing this for some time you'll forget you were even dancing to impress others in the first place, which is when your cerebral cortex really shuts up and lets you dance in whatever ways your brain stem suggests.
Having beaten fears of Hellfire and my own self-consciousness this far, I'm now looking to expand my repertoire. I think that if I were able to break dance I could be the master of any uncarpeted surface. Until then, it'll just be me and my dancing shoes clearing out a generous amount of personal space whenever ""Blue Monday"" comes on. Whether you have the moves of Shakira or the Eyeball-Hands Guy from ""Pan's Labyrinth,"" I recommend you do the same.
Want a preview of Matt's dancing abilities? E-mail requests or comments to him at ""hunziker@wisc.edu."":mailto:hunziker@wisc.edu
