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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2658 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I recently found out another Mottizen likes to dance. Curious if anyone else dances seriously?

For myself I mostly do partner dance - blues & swing right now though I used to compete in ballroom.

I've got a plan to dip my toe into salsa classes and other non-formal partner dances. What's holding me back is I'm making a concerted effort to clear out the backlog of loose ends accumulated from sub-diligent general living before I take up new projects and hobbies.

The primary reason I want to try partner dancing is that I've spent years going to clubs, parties, raves, festivals and other gigs and I'm fed up of the atomisation and informality. No matter the size of the crowd or the style of the music the audience were 99% locked in to focusing on the performer over the music or the other attendees, and any dancing that did happen was either self-conscious freestyling, lesser or greater degrees of going berserk, or thinly veiled dry humping.

Since you're here and it sounds like you've got some breadth of experience, how would you describe the differences in the type of people who are involved with the different styles? Any hobby drama or other funny/memorable stories?

Since I live in a university-town, all the dance scenes in the city trend fairly young, although there are definitely social differences. Salsa has more (continential) Europeans, Kizomba has more African men and 'curvy' women, the Lindy Hop scene is apparently a collection of polyamorous bisexuals, Forro has a lot of Brazilians and Portuguese.

The Latin scene is relatively drama-free, I would say.

Assuming that you're male, I can say that women love a man that can dance. Dance scenes are generally female-heavy as well so it's a great place to meet women if you can get reasonably competent (which does take time).

I notice you've put curvy in scare quotes, lol. Meeting women is a secondary but admittedly conscious goal. Nonetheless dancing is fun for its own sake. As I said it's mostly to find events that have the more structured socialising, structured steps and the different expectations that follow from that - you can't dance for a minute with a new partner and not meet them, but you can dance in a crowd for an hour and meet nobody but the barman. The gender imbalance is another drawback of all of the music-first scenes I've been around. I've lost count of the amount of times I've done a quick head count and found an 8-1 men to women ratio.

I'd be happy to try out most styles just for fun, the only ones I'd avoid are the high tempo, highly athletic ones that reward lifts and dives and suchlike.

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