I’ll often dance alone in my kitchen when a song like comes on the radio.
I love dancing. Always have, and I can’t really explain why. Especially when there’s a lot of folks dancing and it’s great music and everybody is happy–that’s an incredible feeling. Communal and individual all at once. I can’t* not* dance in a situation like that.
Gotta say there’s some truth to this, in my experience.
And that Truth is, it really feels great to move the ol’ pelvis in rhythm with music that is designed to do that. It comes hand in hand in pelvis to have music meant to move to. That’s a pure joy for me, and dictates a lot of my taste and love of music. It’s a great release, to dance with a band that can induce a great ecstatic pelvic shake.
My best experience with that was in the old juke joints in Mississippi and Memphis. Everyone there danced, guys and gals: it was the weekend really release. I’m a white gal, but that was where I learned to dance with abandon, as a regular social get together.
Harumph! :mad: There is not the slightest grain of truth in that. I can’t dance worth a darn, but I am a veritable god in the sack.
If you’re a woman, no matter how ugly and how bad of a dancer, there’s always someone who’s going to enjoy seeing your tits and ass wiggle around. So women are encouraged to dance.
Men, lacking boobs, are not as encouraged to dance. So they don’t. They’d also rather sit back and watch the girls dance anyway.
This premise fits nicely with the “gay guys like to dance” stereotype, eh? 
Ooooh, OOooh…Mr. Kotter!!!
Ummm Duhhhhh, because it’s fun!
Sadly, I live in Alaska (and No, the old adage of the ratio of men to women being 10 to 1 is NOT true, besides, even when it was we girls have a saying “The odds are good, but the goods are VERY odd”.)
Anyway, for the most part, men up here are of the Grizzly Adams variety, and not much given to life’s finer pursuits such as dancing, theatre, etc. (the job and money situation is good though).
I agree with your objection on principle, having dated many non-dancing men, and as a cite:
I’ve been trying to figure this out for a while. And I’m not entirely certain it’s completely due to culture. I hang out with a loosey goosey anything goes clan. Men wear skirts, or nothing at all, as they wish. They hug each other (without doing that thumping on the back thing) and even talk about their feelings and shit. And yet, a minuscule proportion of the dozens or hundreds of dancers around our bonfires every night are men. And a similarly small percentage of the drummers are women. Why is that? No one has a clue. We ask each other that all the time, and yet it persists: women dance, men drum. The few men who dance are not ridiculed in the slightest, and in reality they probably get laid more than all but the rockstar drummers. But still the majority of the men sit on the side, drumming or watching…
Obligatory Dane Cook.
This is not always true. I like to dance around the house, I enjoy moving to music, but I am very bad at it. Not quite Elaine from Seinfeld bad, but bad enough that dancing in public is something I tend to avoid (except slow dancing because that is mostly turning in circles and not too incredibly difficult.)
I have received nothing but praise for my sexual prowess.* I have also been with a couple of men who were excellent dancers who couldn’t tell their ass from their elbow in bed. It is a measuring stick, to be sure, but a person’s ability to dance doesn’t necessarily reflect their ability to get down tonight.
*There was once incident with a guy who ended up with an injury but it wasn’t my fault, I promise! He was less than impressed with the situation as a whole after that though, which is understandable but in no way reflects upon my abilities.
Of course this is the Dope, the island of anomalies in any given statement, however I stand by my assumption. People who know how to move, well, know how to move. You can tell much of what you need to know about the measure of a person to their reactions on the dancefloor. As with many things enthusiasm can often make up for lack of formal training. 
False.
Eh, I dunno. I guess I don’t have such a wide sample of people in bed, but perhaps you should include the disclaimer of unable to move well in any area of physical activity. I can wrestle, do various martial arts, and run around a soccer or frisbee field, but dancing has fairly well eluded me. I think it’s a lack of concrete goals-- in martial arts, for example, your goal in a certain instance is to connect one part of your body with a target. In dancing, what’s the goal? Looking sexy? Looking natural? Looking like you’re having fun?
I’ve been able to fake the whole dancing thing to a certain extent, but unless it has some set guidelines (like swing, for instance), I think it will always elude me. And believe me, I’d rather have a good grasp of wrestling than of dance for what’s going to carry me further in bed
In *between * songs? Amateur.
I’m not a great dancer, and I’m not terrible at it. Really, very few people are as terrible (or as good) at it as they imagine themselves to be. To worry about looking foolish seems silly to me. In almost any liquor-serving establishment, someone is stumbling around, someone is starting a fight, somone is hitting hard on someone completely uninterested and/or inappropriate, and someone is vomiting. Trust me, even if you’re a terrible dancer, you’re still the picture of dignity in comparison.
I dance because it’s fun, and it feels good, and it’s a great way to meet people.
In any club or bar where it’s too loud to talk comfortably, the crowd divides into the people dancing, and the people standing around watching the people dancing. I have no doubt which group is going to have more fond memories of their evening.
My WAG:
My theory on why anyone dances is to show good health, youth and all that. Much of what defines feminine physique (curves, larger hips and breasts) serve similar roles, right? In a gross oversimplification, men tend to gain more from looking like that have a fat wallet (nice car, watch etc) while women gain more by looking like they’ll bear healthier, prettier young and dancing goes along with that.
I know there are men that like to dance, but I think my friend put it best when he said “I only dance when I’m single”.
This thread makes me think of when you turn the volume completely down during a music video that features dancers. Without being able to hear any music, dancing looks very weird. I often wonder what deaf people make of the whole thing.
Gotta argue with this one. I can’t dance for shit.
They must feel the vibrations!
Count me in as a girl who likes to dance, but dislikes the overly-sexual style of club dancing. Now bhangra dancing is a good time, so is square dancing and contradancing. I guess I like joyful movement, not the vertical writhing movements that pass themselves as “popular” dancing nowadays.
I’d keep that hand a bit closer to the vest were I you.
Hey, I’ll have you know my vertical writhing is plenty joyful!
In person maybe, but not on TV. Try it. The next time you see a music video, turn off the sound and see how weird it looks, especially if you try to imagine you’ve never experienced sound.