The fellow I’ve been dating has been taking ballroom dance lessons for several months now and I attended a few with him before I injured my knee. There were several single men there, most of whom were quite pleasant. I don’t see anything weird about a guy taking dance classes at all. If anything, it’s smart. You see, as SHAKES is starting to work out, a lot of women, including me, love to dance and love men who are willing to dance with them and well.
I’d say go for it, and good luck!
CJ
THAT’S it! That’s the other dance we learned in Ballroom - swing/jive. I recommend taking dance lessons to everyone we know, but no one has gone ahead with it yet. We would love to get some other couples into it, so when we go to a Friday night dance, we have other people to talk to between dances. I should give people dance lessons as a gift - that way they’d have to go. 
Yep, every ballroom dance class I’ve ever taken has rotated partners every few minutes, so it’s no problem whatsoever to show up alone. And dance classes are a great place to meet someone – it’s a fun, low-stress environment and you’ve got an easy first date built right in. (“Hey, the instructor said [Location X] was having a [Dance Y] night this Thursday – did you want to go and practice our moves?”)
Which dances are the most popular depend on the area you live in, too. Here on the West Coast, we like swings: Lindy Hop (the original swing) and West Coast Swing (a much sexier, smoother style and my personal favorite).
Other areas favor the ballroom (waltz, foxtrot, american tango) or latin dances.
Dances that are easy for a beginner to learn: Nightclub 2 step, salsa, merengue, and waltz. I would recommend taking a “Ballroom 1” class that spends a few weeks on each.
Not only is a single guy in a dance class not weird, it is (IMO, at least) a huge turn-on, especially if you are any good. Haven’t guys learned that for women dancing ability= sex ability?
Wow, the response to Push You Down has been so positive, even I am thinking of taking up a dance class. The only problem is that I am terribly uncoordinated.
Uh-oh.
Aw, hon, don’t worry. Like in bed, enthusiasm and willingness to learn go a long way. There are very few hopeless cases 
I’ve recently been put back on the ‘single and looking’ status. I just finished a round of Swing dance classes, and liked it so much I’ve signed up for Lindy Hop classes in a couple weeks. Being a single guy without a partner isn’t wierd at all.
In fact, being 6’7’’ and rotating with partners who are 5’0’’ isn’t even wierd. Most of the women think it’s funny. Absolutely do it, it’s a blast.
My experience matches this, but for those of you who are students there exists one large exception. If you go to a technical-type school (MIT, CMU, Caltech, one of those), and attend the ballroom dance lessons there, all you will encounter are guys with SHAKES’s plan. This is the voice of bitter experience, heed it well.
Absolutely.
In fact, PYD, if you can find a class like this, so much the better. The rotating of partners not only gives everybody a chance to dance, but also is better for learning good lead/follow.
What sort of dance do you teach, CanvasShoes?
I’m taking ballroom dancing in college and I don’t think its weird. I’d say women outnumber men 3:1 and I don’t see any couples. I see alot of women who joined with a friend though as after class ends they all seem to pair up when they leave.
In our program though you rotate partners about 10 times each dance session and to find partners usually what happens is both sides line up on opposite ends of the gym (on one side are all the guys and some girls pretending to be guys with the other side being all girls) and you just walk towards each other and pick whomever you are face to face with. So having a partner is not a problem. I’m going to take ‘advanced ballroom dancing’ next semester, this is the most fun class I’ve ever taken.
Right now? Just a hip hop type line dance class (just regular hip hop not Rap and I’m not all that fond of country, but will do some dances if students request it), It never fails to crack me up when people take this class and then say all surprised “wow, this is NOT what I thought line was like, this is FUN”. And I’ve taught Waltz, 2step (not nightclub 2 unfortunately) and some swing and jazz but not right now, the dance and aerobics classes are for fun, I have a regular career. The dance lessons pay well enough, I just love my regular job too much to make it full time.
I also do aqua aerobics, hehe, not exactly dance, but helps with the grace. At least on the dance floor or in the pool. For some reason, I’m still a klutz OFF the floor. snort!
I took a folk dance class in college. Not as bad as it sounds - crazy mix of waltzes, polkas, etc. as well as some lamish figure-type dancing. Think square dancing, but rigid and anal. No thanks.
A couple of weeks into registration, they would actually mark the class as full for women, but open for men. I knew women who had been trying for years to get into the class, and I signed up a week before to fill in 3 credits, and there were still about 2 girls to every guy. So, I spent a couple of periods every week whirling around in circles with 4-5 different pretty women. Rough life, I tell you. 
What’s my point? Take the class! I’m actually planning on signing up for salsa/meringe classes in the near future.
I took salsa lessons for a while, sometimes alone and sometimes with another male friend. Females outnumbered us, and were very happy to have us there. It was at a salsa club, and then regular dancing would start after that. That actually made it easier to dance with people from the class. Didn’t [del]get laid[/del] start any relationships from the class itself, but did from meeting other people dancing.
Learning salsa was great for regular clubs, since you can actually do something when Latin tunes come on. I wasn’t ever a great dancer before, and learning salsa really helped.
Heh – I teach line dance lessons at a local club on Friday nights, and I’m constantly trying to bring more new up-to-date dances (and music) into play. It’s hard to break the automatic mental image people have of it being all “Achy Breaky Heart” (gag) and the like. People here would probably be surprised to know that line dance (to all sorts of music) is huge in Europe right now. Especially on the competition circuits – more so than in the States.
I teach those, too – mainly I substitute teach (or help teach) the classes for a gal here when she’s out of town. And I do a few private lessons here and there. Not my career – just a fun extracurricular activity when I’m not doing my real job. (Have to say my favorite dance is also West Coast Swing).
And as a little more encouragement for the OP: That’s how I started out – going to the dance classes sans partner. So get yer ass to dance class!!!
Thanks everyone. I am going to start trolling for classes this weekend.
Actually, I founded the MIT ballroom competition team, and subsequently coached it for eight+ years, and I disagree. There certainly are some men who show up hoping to meet women, but it’s not the majority, and they don’t usually stick around once they discover than in order to be attractive to dancing women, they will have to learn to dance well themselves.
One year in my intermediate class, I made everyone learn both parts, and required everyone to dance in same-gender couples for the first time through a new figure. That really got rid of the trying-to-meet-girls crowd.
(My reasoning for the teaching strategy, if anyone cares: learning both parts is immeasurably valuable to ballroom dancers. The leaders get a much better feel for what kinds of leads are and are not easy to follow, and the followers stop ragging on their partners so much when they figure out that leading is actually rather difficult. Making them start out in same-gender partnerships meant that in the first time trying out a figure, one person in the couple would be dancing his or her accustomed role, which made for a more “realistic” experience for the other. Once they could execute whatever I was teaching in that configuration, I had them switch roles and do it again before they could dance in traditional couples.)
Push You Down, you may want to see if you have a local college with a ballroom dance club. They often have classes that are open to nonstudents, and the attendees are probably less likely to be in couples than some other venues. You can also get information about the amateur dance scene in your area from USA Dance.
Heh, fair enough. I bow to the voice of superior experience, and approve of your cleverness besides. The lesson, then, is to be diligent.
[something of a hijack]
I might wind up near MIT after I graduate; did/do you have to be an MIT student to join those classes?
[/soah]
The team has some “outreach” classes, especially during the summer, but for a variety of reasons, they have been restricting team membership and access to most of the team classes to members of the “MIT community” - students, alumni, faculty & staff, and spouses of any of the above. The team is in the middle of changing its status from a “club sport” to an “activity,” though, so those restrictions may be eased in the future. There is also a social club that is quite open to “people off the street,” but it does have a higher proportion of the slightly creepy guys on any given day than the team does. If you stick around for a few weeks, though, the regulars will protect you. 
If you do end up in Boston, drop me a line - I can definitely give you some pointers on good and bad places to learn to dance, either in the college scene or out of it.
I heard a piece on All Things Considered Tuesday or Wednesday ( I lean toward Tuesday) of last week where some band has had a huge internet download hit video which features a bunch of guys dancing in someone’s backyard. The choreographer was the sister of one of the guys. She said that the guys were “had some sense of rhythm and were able-bodied” (implying that that was all that was required). Subsequent discussion suggested that “I’ve seen worse” is a polite way of saying that the dancer in question is not the most coordinated would-be dancer ever seen by the teacher.
Heh – that’ll show 'em! I like it. Although I’m glad this was your intermediate level – I’m guessing this strategy would scare off beginners, even the ones who were not just out to pick up chicks.
Most definitely – very good for lead/follow technique. I can follow some dances pretty well, but I wish there were more people around here with whom I could practice that more regularly. I find that except at competition levels, it’s more frequent to find the ladies learning to lead than the men learning to follow (or willing to lead another guy). But when I try to follow the women around here (who can lead), their leads are too light for the dances that I’m not as practiced in on the follow.