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Comment by apeace | Hacker News Reader

My breakthrough came when I stopped thinking of dancing as a way to impress women, and started thinking of it as a way to have fun with my friends. I don't know if dating is what's on your mind, but I know for many people they see "dancing in a club" as some sort of ritual you're supposed to learn to attract a mate.

My advice is to ask some close friends to go dancing with you. Stand in a group, do whatever you want, your friends aren't going to judge you. Focus on having fun. Make it silly if you want to. If you do that, everyone around you will have fun, too.

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My friends tell me that I have to learn. The trouble is that all of them are really good dancers, so I stand out as a sore thumb.

Their advice is vague:-

"Don't think about it. Just do it"

"Don't be soo digital, be a bit analogue"

"I encourage you to think more like SOFT COMPUTING, not instructions for a CPU"

Here's some real advice from a life-time fun-time dancer:

Isolate and duplicate.

Start with one arm. See what someone else is doing with that arm. Do that. Move on to other parts. Both arms, both legs, torso, hips, head and neck. Then get them to work together. Study fun looking small loop dances from the 70's and 80's and so on. You can floss, do the cabbage patch, the robot and on and on. Get one down and then another. Copy and paste one bit from one to another. Slap 'em around.

But most of all watch other people.

Then again, there's the chance that you have no rhythm and you're a hopeless left footer. Which is good, actually. It means you're free.

> loop dances from the 70's and 80's

Thanks a lot for the divide and conquer approach. Fun looking loops from the 70s & 80s seems like a great start, considering they are simpler for a beginner.

Edit for posterity:- In case anyone is looking for a good intro for the 70s/80s loops, i liked this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awPecmtraXc

Noice! Of course there's youtubes on this stuff. Thanks for the recco.

I also would point those that want to boogie to old episodes of "Soul Train" too.

And for the curious, "Why the 1970's and 1980's?" ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_boom

> My friends tell me that I have to learn.

Yeah... stop right there.

Why "have to"?

Probably because dancing is a big part of their lives. And that's fine. But they're trying to turn you into them. And that's fine, too, if that's what you want.

What do you want? Do you want to learn? If so, do you want to learn just because your friends are pushing you, or because you actually want to?

This is what happened to me, but I require copious amounts of alcohol to get started.

Alcohol is bad brother, esp when used in the context of 'require' :)

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