Everybody Dance Now
A weekly ritual of mine has become watching the surprise hit show, Dancing With The Stars. I started watching since the beginning and I have to tell you something, assuming you didn't know it already-- it's downright addictive.
Basically, Dancing With The Stars has done for dancing what American Idol has done for singing. The funniest part is that neither show is doing anything new, they're just bringing sexy dancing (and singing) back.
See, when my parents were my age, music was actually sung and dances were like children, they had names and everyone of them had their place. The Charleston. The Cha Cha. The Waltz. These are all classic dances that people learned and they went to actual dances, not dance clubs, to meet and dance with other people who had the same moves. Somehow even the rhymthically challenged managed to overcome their two left feet and dance again, despite having guilty feet and no rhythm.
But nowadays all bets are off and I believe it started with my generation. In the seventies they still had dances like The Hustle and YMCA. They were lame and sad dances, absoultely, but they were organized dances nonetheless. I guess if you think about it from a decade by decade perspective, you can clearly outline the de-evolution, so to speak, of organized dances. All elements of good taste and grace were taken out of dances by the time the seventies wore around.
The eighties only further evidenced dance deterioration. Dance clubs were overrun by one too many horny men doing the white man's overbite. As if that wasn't bad enough, they began writing songs about dances that didn't even exist! For instance, have you ever seen someone break out into The African Ant Eater Ritual or Dirty Dancing? What about busting out The Safety Dance or watching Everybody Wang Chung tonight? I didn't think so.
I can still remember my school's feeble attempt at teaching the lost art of the organized dance to us misguided elementary students. In gym class, we learned how to square dance. In Central Jersey, the art of learning how to square dance was about as useful as cow tipping or tractor racing. After all, New Jersey ain't exactly Footloose territory. I can still remember my assigned dance partner, a bad ass boy named James Jones. He was this tall, African American kid who was as thrilled about the dance, and dancing with me, as I was about dancing with him.
My grandmother tried to instill the importance of formal dancing in my friends and I by teaching us all how to do the Chicken Dance in my basement. From there, she became briefly enchanted with The Mac arena. Still, none of these dances held the same type of magic to her as the old time dances did. My mom also threw her hat in the ring by teaching my Girl Scout troop The Stroll once upon a time.
Since my generation had historically had such pathetic offerings, I always rebelled against organized dances as a result. I had no interest in the Cha Cha slide, the Conga line or anything in between. Not only does it show no apparent talent or originality, it's also incredibly redundant. It reminds me of mice running around in a wheel for some reason.
Think about it. How many events have you been to in your lifetime where one, or all, of these dances has taken center stage? Far too many to count, I'm sure. And if you'll take note, they always feature these sorts of dances during the second half of the evening. This is because most people are drunk enough to abandon good taste. Displays of such dances are really just beer goggles for your feet.
This is precisely why I have no interest in adding any type of cheesy, organized dance to my wedding reception, either. If they want to Peabody and Polka it up, by all means. Dancing With The Stars has reminded me just how classy it is to master an old school dance, something that will most likely die when my older relatives do. If I try to do any such dance I feel like a little kid, playing dress up.
Rest assured, if I see so much as a sway in the general direction of a line dance I'm going to strike something, and believe you me, it won't be a pose.
Basically, Dancing With The Stars has done for dancing what American Idol has done for singing. The funniest part is that neither show is doing anything new, they're just bringing
See, when my parents were my age, music was actually sung and dances were like children, they had names and everyone of them had their place. The Charleston. The Cha Cha. The Waltz. These are all classic dances that people learned and they went to actual dances, not dance clubs, to meet and dance with other people who had the same moves. Somehow even the rhymthically challenged managed to overcome their two left feet and dance again, despite having guilty feet and no rhythm.
But nowadays all bets are off and I believe it started with my generation. In the seventies they still had dances like The Hustle and YMCA. They were lame and sad dances, absoultely, but they were organized dances nonetheless. I guess if you think about it from a decade by decade perspective, you can clearly outline the de-evolution, so to speak, of organized dances. All elements of good taste and grace were taken out of dances by the time the seventies wore around.
The eighties only further evidenced dance deterioration. Dance clubs were overrun by one too many horny men doing the white man's overbite. As if that wasn't bad enough, they began writing songs about dances that didn't even exist! For instance, have you ever seen someone break out into The African Ant Eater Ritual or Dirty Dancing? What about busting out The Safety Dance or watching Everybody Wang Chung tonight? I didn't think so.
I can still remember my school's feeble attempt at teaching the lost art of the organized dance to us misguided elementary students. In gym class, we learned how to square dance. In Central Jersey, the art of learning how to square dance was about as useful as cow tipping or tractor racing. After all, New Jersey ain't exactly Footloose territory. I can still remember my assigned dance partner, a bad ass boy named James Jones. He was this tall, African American kid who was as thrilled about the dance, and dancing with me, as I was about dancing with him.
My grandmother tried to instill the importance of formal dancing in my friends and I by teaching us all how to do the Chicken Dance in my basement. From there, she became briefly enchanted with The Mac arena. Still, none of these dances held the same type of magic to her as the old time dances did. My mom also threw her hat in the ring by teaching my Girl Scout troop The Stroll once upon a time.
Since my generation had historically had such pathetic offerings, I always rebelled against organized dances as a result. I had no interest in the Cha Cha slide, the Conga line or anything in between. Not only does it show no apparent talent or originality, it's also incredibly redundant. It reminds me of mice running around in a wheel for some reason.
Think about it. How many events have you been to in your lifetime where one, or all, of these dances has taken center stage? Far too many to count, I'm sure. And if you'll take note, they always feature these sorts of dances during the second half of the evening. This is because most people are drunk enough to abandon good taste. Displays of such dances are really just beer goggles for your feet.
This is precisely why I have no interest in adding any type of cheesy, organized dance to my wedding reception, either. If they want to Peabody and Polka it up, by all means. Dancing With The Stars has reminded me just how classy it is to master an old school dance, something that will most likely die when my older relatives do. If I try to do any such dance I feel like a little kid, playing dress up.
Rest assured, if I see so much as a sway in the general direction of a line dance I'm going to strike something, and believe you me, it won't be a pose.
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