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Comment by deskamess | Hacker News Reader

I have been seeing many videos on aging and how dance is a good option to delay dementia as it uses both the mind and body (assuming you try new dance moves as the old ones become automatic). What is the best way to get into dance if you are above 40 and have heavy feet? For me this is purely for mind-body benefits and not to get 'good' at a particular style. I guess same can be said for picking up a musical instrument although the physical aspect seems less involved (unless you are drumming). Some sort of weekly progression chart.

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If you're male (or want to dance as a leader), there are universally not enough of you to go around in partner dancing (with occasional exceptions), so any partner dance you pick you should be well received if you aren't a creep and just do the work to improve. Some of these dances are easier to get into than others. So your area might have salsa classes. Salsa is nice because it's easy to get into, but you can keep getting better at it forever. Bachata is similar but it's a bit more intimate in my view, so depends what you're after.

Some places just have "social dancing" classes, which is a different thing each week, but they might require you bring a partner, so look into it.

If you're from the US, or less commonly outside of the US, line dancing is a non-partner dance, so a group dance. One of my best friends does it and he loves it. Again don't need to be good to start.

Even if for most areas and most partner dances, there are less leaders than followers, this is not universally true. For instance in Turkey and Buenos Aires, there are many tourists of both sexes, while local women are culturally biased not to participate while local men are culturally biased to participate, hence creating a different gender balance.

Why are there less leaders generally? That is not intuitive to me since it feels like men generally want to fill that role in any context. Are there just less male dancers?

Yes, there are generally fewer male dancers.

When the balance gets skewed too hard one way or another, lead/follow becomes less sex-discriminated. Which usually means that women lead too. But in the past few years it's become much more acceptable for men to follow as well, at least in some contexts.

My 2 cents on this question – it's easier to learn the follower part: you get some basics and then go to social dances events and practice with a good leaders. But to learn the leader part you can't just go to dance events and practice with good followers. It takes more deliberate practice in classes to get the leading part.

There are just fewer male dancers. I've gone to events with insane ratios either way (3x more leaders/followers) but it's rare. Usually there are more leaders at the beginner level and decreasing amounts as you go up (but more followers who can also lead to mitigate).

Every group thing where men play a big part alongside women or kids have a shortage of men. Men are simply way less social than women in today’s world.

To address all of the peer comments at the same time: I don't know.

There are places where men dancing is gay-ish and that deters them. That's an easy answer, but it's not enough because very progressive countries don't do much better on this, by my experience.

I would agree learning to follow in the very beginning can be easier, so that sounds like maybe men don't remain because their job is harder, but I wouldn't agree with this explanation because I observe fewer men showing up for beginner classes, when they don't know their job might is harder (whether or not it actually is).

Maybe men are more asocial on average? I'd be willing to believe that, especially in these times.

A comment above yours comments that this isn't true in Turkey, Buenos Aires, and I would add Paris to this list from experience, and then there's the entire continent of Africa we haven't mentioned and I can't really comment on, but what those places have in common is a cultural presence of dance, often a deep connection to dance where families dance together, maybe mom dances when she's cooking, dance isn't something you pick up as an exotic hobby, it's just that thing everyone does, and maybe you decide to do it a bit more than others.

Every culture with a lot of cultural dance presence would have a different view on this, I suspect.

Salsa is definitely not easy to get into, at least as lead. Salsa music itself is quite complicated for beginners and to keep time and lead moves all while having to improv on the spot. its a really tough partner dance imo. but the rewards are that much more satisfying once you get out of the beginners hell.

Would 100% recommend any kind of partner dancing. my personal favorite is salsa. Granted I love the music, but there is so much to learn in salsa you will never get bored. The connection to music and your partner whilst dancing is some of the best feeling i have ever had. and its a great way to socialise and meet new people.

Just go to any beginner class for social dancing (salsa, bachata, etc etc). They'll have had older/less co-ordinated, trust me. It's fantastic physical, mental exercise and a great way to meet people/be part of a community. I don't regret any of the time I spent dancing.

The writer appears to touch one important point. Many of us are mind-oriented, have lost touch with our emotional and physical side. For us, body is just for moving brain around.

While we all have all of the sides, for such a person, other sides are atrophied from under-utilization, while mind is hyper-trophied from overuse for for things it is not so good at. The primary obstacle for a person like that is to start developing the atrophied sides.

If this is the case, the best way to start is with the simplest possible partner dance, because mind-oriented people naturally approach learning complex body movements through mind, which is exactly the opposite you need to be doing.

So something where steps are one step per beat, like Swedish bugg.

if you avoid the ideological capture of "getting good at [dance style]" then what you dance means is "playing with the physical energy stored in the body"

muscles store physical energy in the form of tension, if you can create a bit of tension [here] then smoothly transfer it [there] you are "dancing".

how it looks to an observer is irrelevant. stretch this game enough on every dimension and it will eventually start to look [positive valence] to observers

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