If you really sit there and think about dancing, it’s a strange concept. How did we as a species even start dancing? My Irish kinfolk have been tip tapping their way across floors for centuries. When the Europeans made their way to the Americas, they found ancient civilizations with their own form of dance. Two tribes so to speak, neither knew of the other’s existence, nothing in common, except they all could boogie. Is it a human instinct? Even babies know to start dancing when their favorite songs come on. Regardless of how or why it started, dancing has taken on a life of its own.
Whether you’re at a bar, wedding, or trying to prove you can climb down the generational ladder on Tik Tok, dancing is either extremely fun or extremely awkward.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can cut a fuckin rug. I was at a wedding two weeks ago and people were looking to me to revive that dance floor. After nearly finding the bottom of a bottomless bar, I put on a show. My over the top antics freed others up to feel comfortable doing a two step shuffle and a couple of shoulder shrugs. As the liquor kept flowing, and the crowd on the dance floor grew, we all began putting arms around shoulders, screaming lyrics in each other’s faces, and collectively jumping to beats to try and touch the ceiling. But there’s a camaraderie to weddings. Everyone feels obligated to dance as to not upset the idiot newlyweds who just dropped 70k on their wedding. Weddings are a safe space, but what about dancing when you’re not in one.
Dancing at a bar takes a specific recipe to pull off. You have to have gone with the right crowd, drank enough alcohol, and be able to convince yourself that if you do this, you’re going to get laid. Girls can really do no wrong on a dance floor. Even if they’re bad dancers, there’s an innocence to it. Guys on the other hand, it can get tragic.
Take this weekend for example, when I found myself at Green Rock in Hoboken with ten of my buddies. A bar where the only place to stand is the dance floor. You can barely move through the sea of people, as the world sweats on you and shoves you in the back to get to the bathroom. The architect of this place should be in jail.
My friends and I cornered one section and tried our best not to be awkward. But there’s no easy way to approach a group of female strangers to dance. Unless you’re Ricky Martin, you can’t walk straight up and start wiggling your hips. You’d look like a psychopath? You might actually scare them. One move is to dance by yourself or amongst your group and pray that a girl green lights you by rubbing up on you. But it’s a tough read. If it is an inviting rub up, you’re in the clear. But if she did it on accident because there’s literally no room and you turn around and latch on to this poor stranger, you’re gonna come across as a predator.
The safest but weirdest way to start dancing with girls is to start singing at your guy friends. You think we enjoy pointing at one another and singing in each other’s faces? It’s an invitation. We’re looking into each other’s eyes thinking about how weird we look and hating one another for forcing ourselves to do this. What we’re trying to do is invite you into the circle without being touchy about it. We’re looking for another group of girls to come sing along with us. If we can get you to sing we can get you to dance. We’ll hype each other up as a collective group with lyrics. Once we sing a couple of songs together and start feeling comfortable, lines will start to form. Once the same girl starts singing at the same guy for long enough, he’ll feel comfortable enough to make a move. Next thing you know, we’re all bumpin and grindin to the newest Drake song.
Of course that’s best case scenario. A lot of the time we’ll throw the singing bait out there without a single nibble. We’ll keep going until we hate ourselves enough to tuck our tails back to the bar and glue our eyes to a TV. You either put a bet in to get you through the night, or pretend you had action on whatever’s showing, even if it’s badminton.
At the end of the day, no one wants to be that person being secretly videoed by strangers for going too hard on a dance floor. The key to dancing is to be comfortable in an otherwise uncomfortably vulnerable situation. Luckily there’s PEDs for that, beers and shots. The way I look at it, I’m always making a fool out of myself. At least with I’m dancing I’m having fun doing it.
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