(no subject)

[sorcyress]

Talking with Kyu has made me realize that I'm really the only person I know who dearly likes both (what I've termed) proper and improper dancing.

The difference is that 'proper' dancing is the stuff I do more often --stuff that has actual steps, patterns, accepted positions for dancing in. SCD, vintage, regency, all ballroom ever, contra ...all proper stuff. Swing too, for the most part, though occasionally I meet someone who doesn't have any idea what the steps are, but still knows how to lead (or let me lead them) and we can just screw around and move.

Improper stuff is what happens at prom, in clubs, at the college dances I go to occasionally, at the Otakon rave. It doesn't have any steps, there are no official positions, and you can't really be any better than anyone else, you can just have more rhythm and less self-consciousness. All it takes is listening to the beat and letting your body move.

In proper dancing, it's about the people. It's about smiling and flirting, light touches, and having two -or four, or six, or eight, or more people work as one glorious well-oiled machine. It's social.

In improper, it's about yourself. It's about closing your eyes and turning the music up so high that you can't have any other thoughts in your brain past just moving. Sure, there are other people around, and at times, you might even be dancing with them. But you're not dancing *with* them, not really, you're just each your own little island, wrapped in music that happen to intersect for a moment.

Proper dancing is for extroverts. Improper is for introverts.

And I dearly love them both.

~Sor
MOOP!

Comments

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Not the only one, nope.

[lonebear.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm an introvert and I hate/despise/loathe what you call Improper dance.

[blaisepascal]

I thought proper dancing was when all the gents were on one side and all the ladies were on the other, and improper dancing was when the gents and ladies alternate on both sides.

Actually, as a self-identified introvert, I don't see "Proper dancing is for extroverts. Improper is for introverts." I prefer "proper" dancing, in large part because it is structured. There's an order, a right way to do it, and that's pleasing to me. I feel I can do them. That's why I like English Country, SCA dancing, Contra, Morris, etc. Even the bloody Macarena.

On the other hand, more free-form dancing, like at clubs (what you've labeled as "improper") makes me feel exposed, unstructured. There is no "right" way, so I have no reference to tell if I'm good or bad. I don't know what to do, and the "instructions" usually leave me feeling just as confused and undirected as before.

[lonebear.livejournal.com]

Bingo! that says it perfectly.

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to track down the link to the multifandom vid Improper Dancing now.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

I've been known to waltz with my eyes closed and all for myself, does that count? (Definitely introvert here. And for the longest time I felt much as blaisepascal describes, until I decided that my "proper" moves are so awesome that they'd fit into an "improper" crowd, too, and feel perfectly at ease after getting the vague idea of what the other folks are about.)

I also totally thought "proper and improper dancing... the kind with the lady on the right and on the left?"

[blaisepascal]

In part response to your comment on my journal...this is an example of why I like you ;-).

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Which? The waltzing for myself, the intraversion, the awesome moves, or the country-dance dorkitude?

[blaisepascal]

A little of all; definitely the "country-dance dorkitude", but all have parts I like. Although I admit it is to a certain degree the parts where you agree with me ;-).

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Fair enough.

[emp42ress.livejournal.com]

Except that you're missing my favorite type of improper dancing, the type I see at cons sometimes and in West Coast goth clubs. That is the type where it is all about focusing on, moving with, leading and following a partner. There are no set steps or preconceived ideas it can be almost a fight or nearly sex on the dance floor, it's all about the interaction. It is very hard to do with more than a few people at a time, but sometime 3 or 4 people can set up a great interaction. In between partners you might briefly dance alone, but that is a waiting period, and, by no means the point.

How does that interact with your spectrum?

[xalolo.livejournal.com]

Oh no! You're just a Vert!

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I actually like both types too, though I tend to combine them and have been known to do swing and waltz on a dance floor where everyone else is doing ghu-knows-what.

[lightningirl22.livejournal.com]

You are not the only one who likes both, but for me, I will not do what you called the 'Introverts' Dance' until I am very confident with the people I am with/the situation I am in. Just throwing my two cents in.

[blaisepascal]

For a long time, I had the "rule" about dancing: Either I had to be drunk enough to not care what people thought of my dancing, or everyone else had to be drunk enough to not care about my dancing. It is very rare that I'll enjoy free-form/club dancing.

[olszowka.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I had a different way of slicing it. I always thought that I liked to dance, but I didn't like to be a choreographer. I wanted someone else to make that decision.

It's one of the reasons swing is not my favorite dance form or why I like Balkan line dances, but not Balkam and Rom (Gypsy) solo dances.

It's also why I find this idea appealing that I've heard recently. Get a group of people together, memorize a few contra dances, and go do them in a nightclub. They'll work to a lot of the music you'll find there.

[hmark42.livejournal.com]

::raises hand::

I have rather enjoyed a few different "styles" of dance, some of which meet your definition of "proper" and some of which meet your definition of "improper". There was a group of us years ago from the contra dance community in Albany, NY who, after contra dancing for three hours, then going to a diner for snacks and socializing, would then head somewhere with a dance floor and a DJ playing rock-n-roll (that's what we *used* to call it, anyway ;-) and dance for another couple of hours or so before calling it a night around when the club closed. Them was fun times, I tells ya!

It was during the same time period a trained dancer friend of mine got a bunch of untrained dancers together to do modern improvisational dance, and I have a VHS videotape of the performance we did (including some of my own choreography!).

Line dancing is not my thing, and despite (or perhaps because of) growing up in the 70's, Disco *never* did anything for me. I probably would have had fun break dancing, back during *that* fad, but never did get around to trying it. That whole Macarena fad was never of interest to me either.

I do like to Waltz, and have done some swing/jitterbug dancing, too. And slam dancing was fun, other than that time there were a couple of guys head-butting unreceptive people.

So, um, yeah... count me among those who like a number of different sorts of dance styles and forms, including both what you call "proper" and "improper."

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Proper dancing is for extroverts. Improper is for introverts.

And I dearly love them both.

Which means ... you're a pervert?

[genarti]

I'm an introvert, and I prefer proper. *grin* If I felt like getting overanalytic and making wildly sweeping generalizations based on thirty seconds thought -- which, hey, that can be fun! -- I would say that it's easier for introverts to do dancing where you have the motions of interaction all scripted out for you. But I may be totally and utterly off-base here. And I know I'm coming at it from an odd angle, because I've been doing SCD for years and years.

That said, actually, I do like improper dancing too. I just am not as good at it, and am much more self-conscious about it, so I have to be in the right mood to feel like it. It's improvisational, self-centered but totally visible; that takes a lot of extroversion and a bouncy good mood for me.

Whereas with proper dancing, I'm confident that (depending on the type of dance) either I can just get up and do it at any point, or they'll make allowances for a beginner and I can probably trust my partner/teacher/etc to lead me through it and let me know when there's a dance I can't just muddle through and pick up as I go along.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

No, not the only one, though I dance improperly rather rarely. This is largely because I don't really think of it as a purely introverted activity -- while I can lose myself in the music, I don't get started unless I have friends to go with, and dancing near them is still important, even if I'm not dancing with them, per se. I'm too self-conscious when completely surrounded by strangers (which, of course, is one of the ways in which I'm introverted). (And there can also be actual dancing with another person, which can be much like proper dancing (but more like tango than country dancing), and is a lot of fun.)

I did actually get to go improper dancing the week before last, with oh_desy and a bunch of other linguists.

Incidentally, I score about halfway (or, really, mixed) on all the introvert/extravert tests.

[fuechen.livejournal.com]

Improper dancing isn't for introverts in the slightest. Mainly friends of mine who are ridiculously extroverted love "improper" dancing more than they like "proper" dancing by quite a bit. Sometimes they just dont give a damn to learn the steps and rather go a long with their own thing. There are certain moves that one can see sometimes with improper dancing (this is generally when it degenerates into something that is very close to sex)

Generally this is a dance form that requires one to be more extroverted in the first place especially in a club, because one has to go out and find a partner, someone they dont know to basically let them have sex with clothing on. I have known girls who have just had some random dude come up behind them and start grinding at parties and then after a few songs just leave no name exchanged, no asking, it just happens.

With proper dancing there is always that atmosphere of respect where one thinks more about the steps they are doing. Neither dance is for either type of person really, one is just a crude shallow attempt at the other really. (im not knocking one over the other because both are a shit ton of fun.)More or less it depends on how close one wants to be to the person they are dancing with i guess.