Tips on Replacing One of My Left Feet?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Okay, I have a feeling this topic is a guy thing, but I’d like any responses.

I’ve recently started dating a really hilarious girl who eats like a horse and drinks like a fish. But there’s a mixed blessing.

She is (or was) a dancer. Graceful as a swan and natural rhythm. Now, while the benefits should be obvious (yes, Flyp’s a shallow, chauvinist pig at heart), the drawback is that I despise dancing. It’s a fine trait in others, be assured, but on the whole I’d rather eat my own feet than have to dance myself. It’s only after upwards of 8 or so beers that I can be convinced to head out on the floor.

So, anyone out there have any hints on overcoming this? She hasn’t been too forceful in coaxing me, but I don’t want to lose out to some damn Ricky Martin if this becomes a big thing.

He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral

2

I also despise missing my tags. Damn.

He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral

3

Well, I guess it depends upon why you hate dancing. If it’s because you’re self-concious about it (and given that it takes several beers to get you out onto the dance floor, that seems to me to be the case), the best thing to do is to sign up for dance classes. Having a good education in ‘how to dance’ can put your mind at ease when pulled out onto the floor; in addition, taking a beginner’s class means being stuck in a room with people who are just as twice-left-footed as yourself, so it’s a lot easier to let yourself go and experiment.

I wish I could say that I speak from experience, but I haven’t quite gotten around to taking dance lessons yet…

JMCJ

“John C., it looks like you have blended in very nicely.”
-UncleBeer

4

Just watch Elaine on Seinfeld and do the opposite.

Or read this: http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/003585.html

Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.

5

Say hi to Jennifer for me.

Now, if that actually hits the mark, I’ll be as surprised as you.

As to how I came to be less uncomfortable dancing with my own girlfriend: just do it. Get out there, (preferably in a rather dark area, with absolutely no one around that you know) and try. I will dance with her now, but not alone, and not in front of other friends.

6

Well, it could mean something, but you’d have to come across with some more details before I’d do anything of the sort.

Oh, and if this helps to clear anything up…Jennifer is not the dancer’s name.

He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral

7

Just tell her how you feel and ask her what she suggests. She would probably be flattered that you would want to learn to dance and offer to teach you or be a partner in a class, either that or she would say it doesn’t really matter to her. Either way she isn’t going to dump you because you have two left feet. Most women like a guy who can discuss what they are and aren’t comfortable with. We really don’t bite… unless you want us too :wink:

I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!

8

Flypsyde,

I joined a dance class a long time ago, and everyone was really friendly. I’ll never be a great dancer, but after summoning up courage to go, I had a fun time.

Incidentally, I expect your friend would enjoy teaching you!

PurpleCrackwhore,

‘Most women… really don’t bite… unless you want us to.’

Excellent!

Why doesn’t the sun come out at night when the light would be more useful? (Pratchett)

9

Flyp said:

It’s only after upwards of 8 or so beers that I can be convinced to head out on the floor.

You’ve got your solution right there. Drink like a sailor on shore leave. Seriously, I do this all the time to please my girlfriend - in the dancing area, that is !
I’m much smoother and seem to find a natural sense of rythm when intoxicated. Which is TOTALLY ABSENT whilst sober.

Another thing I often wonder about. I have a perfect musical hearing. If a singer is off-key for a quarter note, I’ll be able to tell even if the stereo is tuned down and convo is going on in the room. I can spot a wrong note in a guitar solo at a very loud Iron Maiden concert.
But as said, I have NO rythm. I’m the whitest man you ever saw, in that respect :wink: I dance like Mr. Bean.
Somehow, this strikes me as odd. It just seems so logical that the musical and rythm parts of your brain are somehow interrelated. In me, apparently they’re not. Does anyone have the same paradox ? And if it isn’t a paradox, why not ?

Coldfire

“You know how complex women are”

  • Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
10

This one drove me crazy about my last boyfriend. He would not dance. The man loved music in all shapes, manners, and forms, but he’d rather have his toenails pried up with bamboo splinters than join me on the dance floor. I never saw such a self-confident man become a writhing mass of neurotic, twitching, self-consious doubt.

The thing that killed me was that no one was watching him dance. I didn’t even watch him dance. I just enjoyed sharing his body space, moving in rhythm, and being physical. But he was certain that he wasn’t just being watched, but that the whole place was doing an MST3K-style commentary of his performance, complete with scorecards and a five-minute break for sharing lame dance inventions.

It ruined a couple of occasions that could have been intimate, sweet fun.

The only things I can tell you are:

  • take a class or two and learn some basic, foolproof steps that you can always do without feeling stupid or uncomfortable.

  • get over the feeling that your skill in dancing has any relationship to how much fun dancing is.

Will work for sig line.

11

See, I don’t dance either (you’ve never seen ugly till you’ve seen a big galoot like me dance), but I’d like to learn. What’s holding me back is: aren’t most dance classes for couples? What does a single guy do?

12

::Walks up to Max and asks for this dance::

I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!

13

Dancing is like shopping: Most men hate it and most women love it.

It’s not that big a thing, really. In fact, nobody expects a man to even appear like he knows what he’s doing on the dance floot.

With that said, dancing well is one of the best ways to thoroughly impress a woman…or so I’ve heard, and it appears to be true.

Tell her that, if she wants to dance, then she’s going to have to be the designated driver. Then get down and make it funky, dude.

“Sharpen your cutlasses. There may be skullduggery ahead.” The Penguin

14

Flyp - in order to really help you, I need to know why you despise dancing, and what kind of dancing you want to do.

For now, I’m gonna go on the assumption that you hate dancing because you don’t know what you’re doing and you feel like you’re going to make a fool of yourself(Be honest, you love watching your sweetie dance!)
I’m also going to assume that this is free style dancing to rock&roll/pop.

Well, this makes you pretty much like my ex-husband and every guy I ever had a long-term relationship with. I tried to teach several of them “how” to dance and failed miserably, except with my ex. I suspect that having your SO teach you to dance will be a lot like wallpapering a room together… a good test of how strong your relationship is! Trying to learn to dance can be frustrating when you are trying to be perfect for the one you love - you will not get it right the first time, or even the hundredth time. It’s like any physical skill.

My ex also tried the class thing, which also frustrated him. Of course, he doesn’t take criticism very well. Actually, he doesn’t take gentle hints very well.

So, how did I get him dancing? I’ll try to boil it down:

Homework
a) Next time you go out dancing, before you have those eight beers, do this: first, observe the dancers. Your eyes may be first drawn to someone who is really creative & out there. Now look at some of the others. Are they very creative, or are they doing the same thing over & over? Even the jitterbuggers are probably repeating the same 3 or 4 moves. Can you really tell if anyone is on beat?

Reality check 1a - People are out there to have fun, not to win contests. Besides, if you can’t tell if they’re on beat, most likely they can’t tell either. And they don’t care.

b) Now look at the people not dancing. Are they watching the dancers? Unless someone is doing Salsa, or making love on the dance floor (same difference) they are either watching the band if there is one, or scoping out the opposite sex, or talking with their friends

Reality check 1b - No one cares wtf you are doing! But - if someone does notice that you are dancing, they do not think Gee what a dweeb. If a guy notices you, he is probably thinking “Boy, that guy sure is lucky to be dancing with that hot chick!” If it’s a woman, she’s probably thinking “You go, girl! You got one that dances”

Now here is where I used to tell my ex that I could guarantee that no one would be watching him. If your girlfriend is a good dancer, she should be able to say the same.

Another thing to talk with your girlfriend about is what she expects of you as a dancer. I suspect that you think she wants you to be a great dancer. Wrong Your purpose on the dance floor is to allow her to get on the dance floor without looking like she couldn’t get a date. Also to share an activity which (if she is like me) is about one step away from sex. (When I was married, many times my husband & I would only dance at home for a few minutes… before I dragged him off to the bed, or the couch, or the floor…)

Well, I’m getting tired, so I’m going to add more tomorrow, but I want to add one more observation tonight. If you go out dancing several times, you’ll notice a phenomenon I call “critical mass” - the number of dancers that have to be on the dance floor before a person will get out and dance. Critical mass is different for every person, and is inverse proportion to the number of alcoholic drinks consumed & also in inverse proportion to the how much the person likes a particular song. This usually lead to an interesting effect where the dance floor is bare for half the night, then one song is played and the floor fills up instantly.
Zyada

This post written under the influence of Santana

…in a state so nonintuitive it can only be called weird…

15

Good advice, Zyada.

I am extremely fortunate. I was in dance programs most of my life (jazz, tap, ballet.) and when I met my husband, he asked me to join a german folk dance group that he’d been in for years. It’s not all the hoots and chuckles you’d think. The dancing is exceptionally repetitive and in dorko costumes, but the perk was our dance group got free drinks and a meal and had a lot of laughs during Octoberfests that run in July/august and september. ( Go Figure.)

We’ve danced in front of as many as a couple thousand ( Downtown Detroit Germanfest) and as little as three people. We are hardly perfectionists, hubby and I. ( or our dance group for that matter.) It’s actually a laugh to see the videos of our dance group perform because there is usually one dance that we forget which way to turn or step and are off cue or we are too busy talking and dancing we run into someone else and well, what you see is us Winging It. It’s always good for a laugh at parties.

I’ve never been embarrassed by this because 1) anyone watching folk dancing for entertainment that is not a family member needs to have a lobotomy and 2) 99% we did our dancing when the band took a break and that means everyone is at the bar anyway quenching their thirst.

Hubby is an excellent dancer ( any style) and I’m not so bad myself (really). Self confidence is key. Together we have taught several friends how to dance the night before their wedding just so they look good on the dance floor when it’s the “first dance”.

[Hijack] Even though marriage is a dot on the horizon. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE learn the basics of a waltz ( or something similar) for your first dance and **PAY ATTENTION THIS IS CRITICAL ** pick a song that you can dance to. ( No “Wind beneath my wings” or " My heart will go on." either, please,neither is danceable regardless of how many beers you consume.)

There are few sights that I find more annoyingly pathetic than a couple that plan for months/years for their wedding day and shell out a truckload of cash and then stand there like two 12 year olds at their first Sadie Hawkins clinging to each other like a drowning man on a buoy in a hurricane. Take a dance lesson or ask someone ( grandma, aunt, mom, mother in law…) to help you out. Watch the KING and I, fer cryin’ out loud for the
" Shall we dance" polka scene. Please, or I shall pelt you and your bride with the table favors and possibly the cutlery for not listening to me. [/hijack] *The above hijack applies to all people who think they will ever get married. *

Personally, to me, I’d rather waltz, polka, ballroom, etc than do what I call the grand mal seizure on the dance floor. However, I am capable of doing that, but I use to feel silly until I realized I didn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thought about my dancing and probably no one was paying any attention anyways. Now, I do what I charmingly refer to as, “Interpretive Dance” and just wing it out there. I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks and (corny word alert) feel the music. The first time I did my Intrepretive Dance stuff was with the influence of vodka. I haven’t touched vodka since, but I’ve done lots of dancing.

Going to an Arthur Murray class may be a bit uncomfortable, but everyone else there is nervous too at first. You see, they probably have the same inhibitions.BUT you are making a genuine effort to learn something new. THAT is never easy.

We’ve done Arthur Murray classes. It was a courtesy thing. Our dance group taught them a couple of folk dances and they taught us to do a merengue or tango or something. I don’t really recall. Hubby and I missed the night that all our friends went, but the night we went, we found the instructor slightly lounge lizardish, but an excellent instructor. The only problem with this situation is the music you hear in the dance classes you never hear ( at least 8 years ago) in the bars.

So, if you waded through all that palaver, Shirley’s Dancing Advice:

  1. relax
  2. be yourself
  3. No one is really watching you on the dance floor anyway.
  4. Take a class or get a grandma to teach you the basics. ( perhaps a video too)
  5. There is no better feeling in the world than holding your loved one in a "this is your dance space, this is my dance space’ hold and doing it right. ( ok, sex is a better feeling, but this is with your clothes on.)
  6. It’s fun.
  7. Dancing = foreplay :slight_smile:
  8. Do it (dancing or sex) to music you really like.
  9. Practice dancing in the privacy of your home until you are comfortable with it, then take it on the road.
  10. Line dancing is a great way to learn the basics and overcome fear of dancing.

Good luck.

16

All very good advice above. Read it and reread it. All of it. I must add, though, that there are a couple of things that will prevent you from ever becoming a good dancer, except in very rare cases. Consider them genetic risk factors for bad dancing. Do not be alarmed. Few people fit into three of these categories, much less all of them. Study the list below. It is reasonably certain that you will never be a good dancer if all of the following applies to you:

  1. You are male.
  2. You are white.
  3. You are straight.
17
  1. You are American.
18

Thank you all for the advice, and I look forward to hearing the rest of zyada’s.

I’ll give these a try this weekend, probably.

Oh, and TH, your 4 points…I’m putting them on a t-shirt. I’ll send you one.

He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral

19

Thanks a whole f**king lot, TH. You just set my campaign to get men dancing back by about 5 years!

[Flypside]So, Zyada, all the pep talk’s great, but I want to actually know how to do something[/Flypside]

The first best way to pick up dance moves is to watch other people and try to do what they are doing. Get your sweetie to dance for you (to your favorite music) and watch her carefully (here, let me twist your arm). When you are working on a move, start with the feet and work your way up. BTW, you are NOT supposed to move your hips like your girlfriend does. And if she does anything that makes her breasts move in all sorts of nice ways, don’t do that either. Now that I think about it, you’ll probably move your feet, maybe your arms & hands, and just keep your hips and torso loose & relaxed. They’ll tend to go along with the rest of the body nicely that way. But before you do anything else, get the feet going.

The hard part of dancing is “ear-foot coordination” or what we’re calling rhythm. Like eye-hand coordination is the interaction between vision and touch/muscle sense, rhythm is the interaction between hearing and touch. If you can clap or snap your fingers in time to music, you’ve the capacity for rhythm. The advantage that clapping has, is that you have immediate aural feedback that you’re doing right. In dancing, you need to know how it feels when it’s right. Basically, a move should END on a beat. (I’m wondering if this is why musicians have a hard time with dancing, Coldfire, because in playing an instrument it may be that moves start on the beat, or end right before the beat?) If you pay attention to what you’re doing even in normal activities like walking, there comes a point in a move that the movement stops, or changes direction. That is the point which needs to happen with the beat.

If you have problems with that, try this: Turn on music, put your hands on your girlfriends hips, and have her dance. Ask her to do fairly sharp, simple moves. Close your eyes and absorb the interaction of the music and the movement.

Note that music has both a beat and a rhythm. The beat is even, what you snap your fingers to when the music is playing. There is usually a secondary beat in music, either half-time or double time of the primary beat. (half as fast, or twice as fast) The rhythm is sort of a percussive melody. Since almost all rock&roll songs are written to 4/4 time, most rhythm patterns are 8 beats long. Start counting beats in a song and you will soon notice the music changes every 8 beats. You can dance to the beat or to the rhythm. Dancing to the rhythm is more advanced and you have to know the song real well. Start with dancing to the beat.

Besides the dance floor & your SO, dance movies tend to be a good source for moves. Strictly Ballroom and Dirty Dancing are good picks. Salsa (the movie)is wretched but has some decent dancing. Dance With Me is just boring (boring dance sequences - now that’s pitiful) Dance classes are good for moves, especially partners moves.

Finally, dancing is a creative exercise, and creativity, like muscle, grows with use. Dance a little every day and you’ll find that dancing is not only easier, but more creative as well.

Have fun
Zyada

…in a state so nonintuitive it can only be called weird…

20

Oops, I almost forgot something: an actual dance move. This is what I call the white man’s shuffle :slight_smile:

Step to the right (with your right foot silly) Then touch your left foot to the floor next to your right foot (without actually putting your weight on your left foot.)

Then step to the left and touch right.

Rinse, repeat. (Step, touch, step, touch…)

If you get bored, alternate stepping forward & stepping to the side.

…in a state so nonintuitive it can only be called weird…