I didn’t go out of my way to dance too often during high school. School dances weren’t even on my radar until junior year, and at that point I was just thinking about not going to prom. I attended my first high school dance, Winter Ball 2005, in January of my senior year, and it was a disaster. I had a new haircut to worry about, a recent ex to avoid and a suit that looked sharp enough that I was sure somebody would see me dancing.
It only got worse.
By the end of the night I was smoking a borrowed clove cigarette and leaning up against my parents’ van, relating my trials to my passengers. My suit jacket had been stolen from the coat check, that ex had been too easy to avoid and now I had to drive everybody home. I ended my laundry list of complaints by shouting “And I can’t freak dance!”
Since then I’ve become more comfortable with dancing in general. I have developed a number of signature dance moves, none of which have caught on, and I promise I go dumb. I still can’t freak, or grind, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a pretty basic style of dance, I know, and it might seem impossible to screw up. It’s not. I could blame it on my being too tall, or on being conditioned by society to fear so much contact, but the fact remains as simple as it was on that cool Oakland night two years ago: I cannot freak dance.
This failing used to bother me every time I went out, but now I’m just bored. I know that in the context of college, “dance party” usually means rap music and grinding, and that’s perfectly all right most of the time, but it doesn’t have to be so.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with rap or grinding – simply that there are other styles of music and other dances to do. People seem willing to dance to faster stuff when somebody plays it, and I know a few people who, like myself, feel more comfortable experimenting with moves like the clock, the air traffic controller – or even the fourth arm.
These moves are just the beginning. Imagine the possibilities of an entire dance floor departing from the nightly grind. If everybody caught on, we could do anything. We could bring line dancing back into the mainstream if we felt like it. Imagine a room full of people lined up, doing modified, synchronized snap moves. At the very least it would entertain the non-dancers.
I’m not suggesting that everyone should abandon freaking altogether, merely that a little variety would not hurt anybody. Dance battles might, but that’s another column. So next time your neighborhood sound system switches from Mims to MYLO, instead of trying to make the grind match pace, experiment. Come up with something new. Maybe, given time, your dance move will be adopted by a legion of line dancers.
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