Not trying to clown on anyone or anything. It’s just that I’m watching a dance game show right now and I’m just :jesse-wtf: the whole time. It’s like this for every time I see dancing. I get it’s fun and could be impressive but… I just don’t get it :duck-dance:
Hexbear :solidarity: not understanding basic, commonly enjoyed human behaviour
there's a huge neurodivergent contingent here
if you wanna join us and experience the joys of special interests and hyperfocus, I can give you some of these vaccines I was planning to take to become more powerful
In terms of performance art, the point of dance is "what can we communicate purely with the language of our bodies and our movements" and the art of dance is the depth of subjective interpretation of that communication.
In terms of spectacle, it's sick to watch routines that people practice for months on end. Be it songs, dance, etc. When there's multiple people, you can get this sick af synchronizing effect where everything just hits exactly where everyone in the group wants it to that never gets old to watch. Sick moves, clearly practiced, I can't do em, so that's cool af.
In terms of communal dancing, sometimes the vibe just calls for some :duck-dance: with comrades.
:lt-dbyf-dubois: "Lieutenant! I am only going to pull rank on you one time. And that time is NOW!"
:lt-kitsuragi: "Are you kidding me?"
:lt-dbyf-dubois: "It's all a *joke* to you, isn't it?! Chain of command -- joke! Future of dance -- joke! Well, no more! Cut a rug, lieutenant!"
I get dancing, I just don't have the urge to do it. Which is a little weird because a lot of the music I like is very danceable and I love rhythm games, especially DDR.
Personally I live for a big sweaty dance with friends in any context. We will groove to most genres of dance music, and do so often at gigs, raves, parties, festivals etc.
It took a while to deconstruct anxieties about other people's opinions of my dancing, but now I'm a lot better at it, and care a lot less, which go hand in hand I think. Dance is now a communal, meditative, ecstatic space where my social life and interests in art and music collide.
Recently saw a jungle/DnB set with Punjabi folk music mixed in, it was super cool to see people recognise lyrics and sing along to tunes totally outside my experience, and I didn't feel like some cultural voyeur, a scene-tourist taking up space, because we all got down and danced together. Yung Singh was the DJ.
Hope that provides some insight or something. No need to feel odd if it ain't your thing, it's by no means mandatory to enjoy!
As an aside, I always recommend music.ishkur.com for an irreverent tour through dance music.
I got dancing exactly one time in my life. In college at the local college bar on a weekend getting a little drunk with the fellas. Some campy ass song comes on, lol I don't like this shit, but I'm like "hey it'd be funny if we danced" to my best bro, you know like a goof. So we left the table and we were clowning and we returned to the table and we were clowning but I can't be sure what happened in between. It probably LOOKED like clowning but it felt like dancing. And that's the time I got dancing.
It began to make more sense after I realized that it's essentially whole-body headbanging.
On a semi-related note: If you (like me) are kind of a geek for obscure and archaic alphabets and writing systems, check out Beauchamp-Feuillet dance notation. Most intimidating shit I've ever seen. Hard to believe it was invented in a country where it is widely believed that learning to read and write Chinese is difficult.
It's cardiovascular exercise, rhythm, flexibility, athleticism, choreography, and musical accompaniment all wrapped into a graceful display of human beauty.
Speaking specifically about white people in :amerikkka: dancing just...isn't really a thing that people learn any more (in particular men) unless they actively seek out dance classes. If you've never learned how to dance, I can totally understand why you'd be afraid to make a fool of yourself. I'm thankful to have been brought up in a culture where everyone dances; I was always inclined to dance from a very young age anyway, but I don't think I would enjoy dancing nearly as much if it hadn't been de rigeur at all social gatherings. It's a shame, since dancing is one of the most primal social activities; at it's core, it's simply moving in time with a rhythm, and even if you don't do "dance" you probably do this to some degree while listening to music, consciously or otherwise. There will of course be people who truly don't enjoy dance in the same way that there are people who don't care for music in general, and that's totally fine, but I think a much larger portion are people who have come to believe that they "can't dance."
I've never been able to find a really good anthropological treatise on the subject, but I've always been super curious about the rapid yet unceremonious death of social dance in the US. You look back as recently as the 50s and 60s and white teenagers were cutting a rug all over American Bandstand, but by the 80s that kind of social dance seems to have completely vanished. The best theory I could come up with is that the countercultural movement rejected fixed "dances" in favor of ecstatic dancing and the like, but that's pure speculation on my part. Seriously, if anyone knows of any good research on this I'd love to read it.
Also, separately, I completely understand not getting the super high-level competitive dance. It's impressive, but it's an entirely different beast from what us mere mortals do. Like, competitive salsa is fucking wild and not really something that interests me (to watch or aspire to) but social salsa is tons of fun. When you have two good dancers who are in sync with each other, everything flows naturally and (IMO) it's one of the most amazing feelings in the world.
I will never dance because I really dislike it. It's cool to watch though I guess
My least favorite part of weddings is various relatives trying to get me to dance
I don't mind getting drunk with friends but when my family is around I never get drunk. Maybe I've been guarding against dancing without even knowing it
Honestly, I had to do drugs to really get it. I was brought up in the shitty “dancing is for women and gays and they’re both bad” American white garbage culture. I tried to get it a couple of times growing up but got shit on for it because patriarchy is a fuck. Now I’m old and have a lot of anxiety but I can get high and dance in my apartment and it’s great.
Thanks for the suggestion for beat sabre, that sounds rhythmic in a nice stimming way without requiring fluidity or looking remotely cool
I like watching people dance and sometimes I like moving to music but I've never understood how to move my body fluidly (learned as an adult that that's apparently an autism trait?)
