Dancing is stupid
stan.bar
stan.bar
Being a dancer (lindy hop) with a large number of dancers in my social circle, dancing is actually a frequent source of tension among many couples around me.
Couples splitting up because one is heavily more invested in dancing than the other is a common occurence.
And don’t get me started on lindy hop vs west coast swing.
The sad thing is that (for the most part) I don't think the westies really hate on the lindy hoppers much. You can see, admittedly older, clips[1] of dancers throwing in a bit of lindy, balboa, and shag in top level comps. Of course, this is Sylvia Sykes, so maybe that's an exception.
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I'm puzzled where this comes from, since they're entirely different scenes. On a social dance night, or say, a festival, one may find Blue/Balboa/Lindy Hop (and possibly Shag), but hardly Lindy Hop and West Coast Swing, since the music is different.
Edit: Actually, the message that the article sends is exactly what happens - dancers try other dances, then they share how they've integrated them into their dance, or how interesting is anyway to try something different - as opposed to intellectual condescension.
> Couples splitting up because one is heavily more invested in dancing than the other is a common occurence.
There surely are occurrences of this, but I wouldn't describe the phenomenon as common. It implies that a romantic relationship is based entirely on dancing, which I don't think is frequent; also, the vast majority of the dancers leave the scene within 3/4 years.
I've personally lived the "mismatch of interest", but it ended up like any other separate hobby in the context of a couple.
It’s reflected by polling the crowd. There are way more women in relationships out dancing than there are men out dancing in relationships. Single men dominate the numbers when it comes to dancing.
This is why I don’t really recommend it to most men as a way to meet women. It’s lopsided numbers and it’s hard to stand out in a good way as a beginner - in most dance scenes anyway. That said, if you have a lot of time to kill and are big on learning new skills… it can pan out but it’s a multi-year endeavor that often doesn’t go anywhere.
This unnerves me. My partner could and would dance all day, anywhere, any scenario. I have to be unbelievably drunk to come close to anything resembling dancing. Any event we go to together that involves dancing is intensely emotionally debilitating to me for that reason, and sometimes I worry that it's a basal insurmountable incompatibility between us.
I wish writing was the author's "dance". Dancing tends to not be the best metaphor for anything in particular. Dancing is just dancing.
Albert Camus dancing (Life Magazine): https://coreyrobin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/albert-cam...
They'll tend to focus on trying to perfect the little details in training and miss the big picture and failed to K.I.S.S. and argue about theory and resist accepting simple rules.
I used to really like watching Deadliest Catch because I grew up in Kodiak and that's a good example of an environment where an intellectual would generally fail pretty badly. You don't need to be particularly clever, you need to understand what is going to kill you (ropes in particular) and to never pick up your feet. It is an environment where you need to be smart enough to follow the rules, and just "dumb" enough not to argue and question them. Embracing shutting up and being dumb is something that intellectuals generally resist identifying as a virtue.
[ And I'd argue that the infestation of contrarianism-for-contrarianisms-sake that infects HN is a larger symptom of that psychological bias -- so many people doing so much work convincing themselves that they're very clever by rejecting all conventional wisdom ]
It's part of why I tend to prefer learning new things alone. I know I'm going to take a long time, and I know I'm going to do a ton of dumb, small, incremental testing to build my foundation.
But I don't think it's necessarily overthinking. Maybe for the immediate context, but not for any context. I know just "doing what I'm told" will likely work 99% of the time. What I'm interested in is why does it work, how do I raise my confidence for the remaining 1%, and making sure I understand the underlying mechanics of things so I can make good judgement calls when situations arise.
It's funny, but dancing in particular has been my greatest fear for as long as I can remember, so I've always done my best to avoid situations where I'd be forced to do it. Not only did I not see the point or appeal, but I deeply dreaded the prospect of going on the dance floor.
As fears go, however, this one is quite innocent, and also fairly simple to face. And how empowering wouldn't it be, to overcome ones biggest obstacle? So not too long ago, when I was invited to a dance class by a group of friends, I decided I'd go, just the one time, as some sort of exposure therapy.
The dance was tango. As I had expected, I was anxious, stressed, and scared through the entire class (although it was very helpful having the excuse that it was my first day). What I did not expect was how fascinating the dance would turn out to be. How beautiful and elegant, yet also technical and structured. I saw our instructors dancing some dead simple improvised steps, and somehow, despite not being planned out at all, they were totally synchronized. There had to be some brain-to-brain communication going on, a sort of body language that I could not yet perceive or understand, but that I knew I wanted to learn.
That was six months ago, and since then I've gone to some sort of tango thing multiple times a week, every week I've been able to. I'm still nervous on my way to a class, and it takes a few dances to warm up and get loose each session, but I'm starting to enjoy it and feel like I'm actually dancing. In the process, I've come to understand more deeply what people mean when they say "there's more to life than X".
Apollonian/Dionysian [0]
>Dancing forces you to be here and now—connecting you with your and your partner’s body. Dancing is a means of irrational communication. Dancing is a conversation between two people where the means of communication are your bodies.
Personally, I wouldn't focus on partner dance. In my experience those tend to be over-analytical and strict.
It is more approachable to immerse yourself in dancing all by yourself and/or in group dance (more akin to ritualistic dances inducing trance-like states).
Now that you bring it up, does it help? That is, does dancing help you get laid?
We got to know each other a lot more slowly, some might even say superficially, but these slow burn relationships with more conversation in dance than in words have become some of the deepest and most meaningful friendships in my adult life.
If I could have my time all over again, I would start dancing as early as possible in life.
Perhaps these people are responding to other peoples sense of superiority. These other people don’t get called out because they are “normal” and we assume that normalcy is automatically superior.
It sadly implies that this person went through bullying and rejection.
It has nothing to do with rejection. This claim that "you poor thing, if you hadn't been rejected you'd see how good this is" sounds really condescending.
Now the age-old question is whether, with enough "opening up", they could. And yes, in many cases with enough therapy they could and would. But in other cases, therapy isn't going to achieve that. But regardless, doing therapy is essentially changing yourself to become a different person. And nobody is under the obligation to do therapy, or to grow or change or open up.
So I think it's important to be able to accept at face value that when someone isn't into something, whether it's dance or sex or the outdoors, they just aren't into it. Leave the door open so they know they're invited on your next hike, but zero pressure.
Everybody gets to make their own choices on what they will and won't enjoy in life, for sure. I'm not the type of person to apply pressure over something like that. But as someone who learned that physical intelligence is something you can grow in my 30s, I do feel it's a bit of a sacred duty to chip away at the same fixed mindset when I see it in other people.
Like how EU4 players feel toward Civ players
Building a system in which you have value and others are stupid can help you cope.
Damn
Everyone and everything influences who we're regardless of their intentions. What is strange is, although you may already be happy and fulfilled, people feel it's their duty to "influence" you to change because their worldview cannot accept you. In their mind they think "you cannot possibly not like this thing that I love." Well dears, it's possible and you should accept that not everyone is like you.
>You can't learn anything from a book that you didn't already know.
Let's start that this very much depends on the kind of book. Putting that aside, literature isn't meant to convey knowledge in first place. Rather literature is meant to convey emotions and imagination.
>but I've seen enough people change
People may change. But that doesn't make right other people to try and force this change.
>You don't have to be open to the possibility of you don't want to be
Sorry but I've hard time understanding this. Do you mean "at least try"? What if they tried and didn't liked it? Do they've to try indefinitely because some people cannot accept the fact that they may not like it?
>I'm not a math person.
Huh! See this is usually said when someone has hard time with math. Which is entirely distinct thing from enjoying math. Have known many people that were good in math but that didn't mean they'll solve math problems in their free time. Similarly people can be good at dance but that doesn't mean they enjoy dancing.
>No amount of trying will make me enjoy dance
Dancing is primarily sexual signaling to potential mates and competition. Being effortlessly good at it's indirect proof that you are atleast somewhat good in bed and are in tune enough to engage in a variety of non-verbal communication and phonic based jousting.
In many cases our notion of intelligence is really just "knowledge that supports my income" which is a real shame. In spite of the existence of the internet, which you'd think would drive a neo-renaissance, where the average person takes a healthy interest in almost everything, no such renaissance spirit is to be found in most corners of contemporary life (personally, I think it's because the amount of information available and speed of access has actually proved too overwhelming, letting other incentives and structures (mass entertainment, social media) win our attention instead).
> I’ve never heard of a family being divided because its members dance different styles
Anyone who believes this needs to go watch Strictly Ballroom (1992) with all possible urgency.
I was also somewhat sceptical about dancing until in my early 20s I made the discovery that nightclubs were not necessarily just places where people went to get shitfaced, but that there were places run by and for enthusiasts of the music - that going out and dancing for eight hours straight was not just something you could do but that was incredibly enjoyable as well.
A huge amount of what has been good in my life since then has, one way or another, come from going out and dancing. Amongst (many) other things, I'm confident that I'm a better programmer for it: the usual arguments (blah blah, lowers stress, default mode network) deployed in favour of meditation also apply to dancing. It won't work if you're forced into it, and I don't think it's cool to do so, but that's why people can be so evangelistic about it.
You might find that your taste shifts a bit over time, and that's fine, and it's fine to shop around a bit: the point is to try to find an environment where you can lose yourself in the music. If you're very self-conscious about your dancing then try to find a more underground scene (I started off in industrial/EBM and moved on to psytrance): partly because people are just more serious about the music and less about trying to hook up, partly because even if you're the world's worst dancer it won't matter because people will just assume you're having a great time because you've taken lots of drugs. Be considerate, give people space, and stay hydrated.
Once you've found your groove - once you've found yourself whooping as the beat drops, once you've found that weird moment where the dancefloor moves in unison and dissolved yourself into it, once you've exchanged exhausted happy grins with the person next to you as the lights go up at 7am - then, if you want to, you can start focussing on technique, on learning new tricks and moves, but it doesn't really matter by then. It's not a competitive sport; the point is not to be good at it, the point is to do it.
Drugs are neither necessary nor sufficient.
I was really bad a it, but to make things worse, she yelled at me in my own ears for being bad at it. Mocked me in front of the other kids and such. I ended not only still being bad at dancing, but hating everything related to it.
As dancing was part of the curriculum, I had to endure the trauma for 6 more years. I never did it anymore, nor tried to learn it whatsoever. For a tropical country like this it could sound like nuts, but despite some people looking you down for not doing it, I haven't had much trouble for that in my adult life.
And no, it's not an elitist "I'm just so much smarter than the people dancing" thing, like the post seems to imply.
They will believe they can show you better and make you like it, and thus will try to obnoxiously persuade you to dance with them.
It's just rude.
And the attitude of yours is also part of the problem:
Believing that somehow grown up people are incapable of learning the very basic fact "dancing can be fun" on their own and need to be told about it and nudged towards it.
No, they don't, they know it can be enjoyable, and they have tried, and it isn't for them, and they don't need to be educated any further.
A little gentle nudging followed by respecting the other person's choice is the way to go. But some people can't seem to compute the fact that there are legitimate reasons some people don't enjoy dancing, and take it as an almost personal affront.
If I'm playing Smash Brothers at a party, I'll totally try to get people involved, even if they don't look interested. But some people don't enjoy video games, and some people just don't like fighting games, so I don't physically force the controller into their hands, claiming "you'll have fun if you just loosen up!"
I DONT LIKE DANCING. I DONT LIKE THE THING THAT YOU LIKE.
1) give in and pretend to go along with it.
2) look like an asshole at a wedding.
Sorry if I don’t want to ruin someone’s wedding lol.
I definitely acknowledge gp’s point, it’s important to respect people’s boundaries and not push them into things they don’t want to be pushed into. I just hope you know that nudging often comes from people who like you and want to share joy with you.
My preferred manner of nudging is to 1. make a fool out of myself to clear space and 2. try and get people on the sidelines to do the smallest dance possible. Wiggle your pinkies, tap your toes, feel your way into it :)
I'm just not made for dancing. I suck at it, and even if I "loosen up" I'm still awful.
It's best for all if I just sit in the corner with my phone reading hackernews. Trust me.
Our just dance like nobody's watching. Elaine sure does.
Wherever there’s dancing at a wedding or something I just think of it as something I have to get through so I don’t appear rude.
Please note that I am NOT making a moral judgement whether or not you should always act in a pro-social way.
Respect people's choices. Let people be adults who have the right to choose.
I mean, I would say this is trivially true?
> You don't have to do them, but yes, you will be judged for not participating.
Why do you deserve to be judged for not dancing, but not for something like joining an 8 player Mario Kart race?
You could apply it to anything. If I went along to a LAN party or an arcade and then said "I don't play video games" people would think I had a stick up my arse and they'd be right.
If you really don't enjoy it then it's normal to not go along to those sort of events, there's nothing weird about that.
> If you really don't enjoy it then it's normal to not go along to those sort of events
I guess I'll just never go to a wedding again, or a live music event, or a house party, or any of the other random events where dancing happens but isn't necessarily the focus.
I mean, yeah, you come off as a bit weird. Sorry. It's fairly integral to all three. Maybe not the wedding depending on the couple.
"Maybe" implying that there are weddings I shouldn't attend because I don't like dancing?
And I shouldn't go to live music or house parties because it's weird to do so if I don't like dancing?
Nahh, miss me with that. This is exactly what I mean. The only weird thing here is the idea that I shouldn't go out and have fun with friends because I don't like to dance. People are so weird about it, and treat it almost like a sacred act.
If your friends like to dance and you're sat in the corner on your phone then you look like a weirdo. That doesn't mean you can't go out and have fun, it means owning the fact that your choices mark you as being different.
I've been there. It's even worse when you get the fake sympathy after you had to get fake mad at their insistence.
So it's not a "god given duty to convince", it's just that it's a genuine act of friendship and support that a lot of people need. The thing is, unless you know somebody incredibly well, there's really no way to tell who needs the convincing and then will enjoy it, and who doesn't and won't enjoy dancing even after they're convinced.
So people try to convince you for a bit, and if you still refuse, then they leave you alone. It seems like a workable compromise. Same as trying to invite you to a party three times and then giving up when you say you're really not coming.
So I agree it's annoying when you really don't want to do something. But I hope you can understand that it is other people genuinely trying to be helpful, in a way that is often helpful for others. Sometimes people really do need help to overcome shyness, even when they already want to.
And what they forget while doing that is that they are not the only person existing in the universe:
Others will also attempt to convince the very same non-dancing person to dance.
So if you are at a party, sitting at the bar not dancing, you will have to have this discussion like 5 times in a single evening.
And if you enjoy going to parties even though you don't dance and therefore go regularly, then over the decades you will have to have the discussion thousands of times - which isn't a workable compromise anymore but just an annoyance.
I am not white (Anglo-Saxon), but I might as well be. I have a sense of rhythm and am flexible and in decent shape, but I also have aversion to attention for both related and unrelated reasons.
Every time dancing comes up, even "white" dancing like line dancing, I avoid it when I can get away with it, because "white men can't dance".
What do?
In my life I became much "lighter" when I learned to don't care so much if people think I'm right. I basically stopped being https://m.xkcd.com/386/ . My advice is be somewhat eclectic and respect other people tastes.
One more thing, and this is something I heard from someone else and could confirm myself: once you pass the stage of knowing your body and reading other people's non verbal communication, dance is purely algorithmic with a bit of Markov chain to decide the next step; we, TI/CS people, are actually the best ones doing it.
Yah, that's why best dancers in the world never train and prepare their routines.
Honestly. Good dancing is when you stop thinking, AFTER you have spent time preparing enough so you don't have to think about it anymore.
I wonder if people watching TV or Youtube get the wrong impression. They see people making things look easy. Nice poses, nice makeup, nice dresses, light moves. What they don't see is countless hours over many years that went into preparing everything.
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I am an amateur runner. People sometimes tell me I am a natural. I honestly look well when running, no hunching, positively bouncy, light steps. No exertion. Easy breathing.
I try to explain that I spent couple years just fixing my running mechanics, one step at a time. Strengthening my muscles and tendons so that I can move my weight to forefoot and recover more energy when running, running with a metronome to get my cadence right, learning to breathe deeply and in sync with my strides, running strides to fix my mechanics when at full speed, bringing my attention to what my hands are doing so that they are relaxed and not moving to the sides too much, making sure my foot contacts pavement under me and not before me, making sure my heels move high up behind me, forcing myself to run straight and look straight, doing strength exercises at home so that my core muscles are strong enough to support good posture while running, learning to regulate my speed by tilting forward, etc.
Even silly things like paying attention to the weather and clothing for the weather. I see so many people put on way too much clothes when it gets just a tad colder and then look visibly uncomfortable throughout the run.
When I started running I did it, too. Then I made a running log where I noted the outside weather conditions and how I felt through the run and over time I learned what I exactly need to put on depending on the weather and the run I am making so I feel just right.
No, things don't come naturally -- at least not to most people.
And I think it is good news. Almost everybody can do almost everything. The only thing that is blocking me from being a good dancer is whether I want to invest the time to become one. I don't. I can relax knowing it is up to me to decide what I can achieve and what I want to spend my efforts on.
Well, yeah, that's what OP said. Good dancing can happen after lots of training or none at all.
But really it is about enjoying music (and thus perhaps celebrating life) with your whole body, often in community with others similarly enjoying.
David Foster Wallace : Uh huh. I’ve just discovered in the last few years that I really like it. Although I’m still not very good.
Lipsky: Where do you go, a club?
David: This Baptist church.
Lipsky: Why there?
David: Because Baptists can dance.
-- from the film The End of the Tour
> There are two things that don't have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter.
Surely there are more. Dancing is perhaps one of them.
They go to the dance floor and do some weird random movements listening to overly loud music of grossly low quality.
Whether people a century or two ago has interpreted this as dance or as some mental conditon is an open question.
I'm all for ball dance or irish dance but not for the club variety.
We live in epoch of deliberate primitivism.
Maybe we prefer a more primitive lifestyle.
IMO, this is just not true.
There is something really special about synchronized action with other people. Be it marching, singing, chanting, etc. It engenders trust, builds community, and generally builds relationships in a way that I don't think anything else does. This isn't a strictly good thing either - my observation is that dancer relationships tend to be... unstable.
And partner dance is one of the most developed and interesting method of synchronized action that people have created[1].
It's fundamentally a different sort of activity to listening to poetry, playing basketball, attending a lecture, or writing a CRUD app.
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1. Orchestra/band rivals dance here - certainly there is opportunity for much greater scale at high levels of complexity. Of course, you have to give up touch to get that.
I disagree. Team sports (playing basketball) are just as much about choreography and also the connection between dance and all other activities you mentioned. The feeling of being part of a "well-oiled machine" is the sense that the choreography is successful. This feels good because most of the time a group of people wouldn't care for doing what you expect. It's affirmation.
I've done team sports and all I can say is: it's not the same[1]. When I'm on a team, we're all trying to achieve the same goal, but we aren't one body. There's no sense that everyone is acting as a single being. Beyond that, I guess, I can't really give much of a logical argument - it's just something that I've experienced. And others may disagree, which is fine too.
My own personal theory is that there is no innate way the body can tell what is self and what is other. And synchronized movement is a sort of hack that tricks people into partially accepting other people as self. But that's just a wild theory I have and has no real backing that I know of.
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1. I suspect that high level military drill probably would engender the same feelings, but I suspect that that's not what you meant when you mentioned "team sports".
But that's what competitive games also do. You cannot play basketball without trusting, collaborating, communicating with your teammates. Those are the pillars of teamwork. Also synchronicity is core to them, so much that researchers have taken noticed (https://www.popsci.com/nba-basketball-synchronous-movements-...).
Sure. But it's different. In a team environment, you build trust with teammates through competence.
That's not really what I'm talking about. Synchronous action doesn't need competence. Church hymn singing is famously bad. But it helps build community anyhow.
> Also synchronicity is core to them, so much that researchers have taken noticed (https://www.popsci.com/nba-basketball-synchronous-movements-...).
I mean, I feel like this link really backs me up.
The stuff they mentioned - marching in step, etc isn't basket ball. It's military parade, basically. And it has the effect of building trust.
It's great that basketball teams have figured out how to leverage that to make teams better, but that doesn't mean that the same thing will happen with lots of drills.
Now switch to professional ensembles and professional sports teams and the level of coordination and complicity is exactly the same.