I was born and raised in America, and for some reason I have this classic notion in my head that people should be dancing at weddings.
However, now that many of my friends from earlier in life and college are getting married, when I go to those weddings, the dance, if they even have one, is on a tiny dance floor, maybe even just a small part of their reception hall that they scooted the chairs and tables out away from.
And it turns out, many people simply don’t know how to dance. Sure, not everyone is a competitive ballroom dancer, but even my non-dancer friends in college would still go to swing dancing night and mess around on the dance floor.
Now, however, people just stand on the dance floor and sway or shuffle. I am loth to even call it dancing. It just seems like people are uncomfortable and not really having fun.
What happened? Did people stop dancing?
PS: Please check out the dance community for more dance related content. I just created it and would greatly appreciate some help with getting it off the ground!
Edit: “am loathe” -> “am loth”. STT is a b.
I do not like dancing because I’m not good at it, so I don’t want to participate in it. I’ve been mocked my whole life for how I move, so putting myself out there where the whole point is movement is just a bad experience. I in fact considered not getting married because I didn’t want to dance in front of people. I think my experience is a little more extreme than other ones, but not far off. Why seek out an experience you hate?
I’m so sorry that other people have been so willingly cruel to you so as to make you hesitant to experience whole class of expression.
To me, dancing is a way to relax and experience music. One of the things my teacher taught me is to smile, “and when you make a mistake, smile bigger.”
Haha - I’d smile a lot bigger if people weren’t so awful to me about how I look! Even dance instructors told me to stop trying, so it’s pretty discouraging and I don’t want to relive that kind of experience. I’m sure I could improve at dance if I took classes now, but it’s not something I’m that interested in. And it’s not like I don’t have other ways of enjoying music - I worked as a pro musician up until 2017 so that’ll always be there. It’s great that you’ve had better experiences than me in dancing, but try not to judge other people harshly for not having the same talent or interests as you. It’s that kind of attitude that makes me - and others like me - avoid all settings with dance involved.