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Nov. 18th, 2008 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressTalking 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!
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!
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on 2008-11-19 07:52 pm (UTC)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."