[doop]

Great article! Also:

> I’ve never heard of a family being divided because its members dance different styles

Anyone who believes this needs to go watch Strictly Ballroom (1992) with all possible urgency.

I was also somewhat sceptical about dancing until in my early 20s I made the discovery that nightclubs were not necessarily just places where people went to get shitfaced, but that there were places run by and for enthusiasts of the music - that going out and dancing for eight hours straight was not just something you could do but that was incredibly enjoyable as well.

A huge amount of what has been good in my life since then has, one way or another, come from going out and dancing. Amongst (many) other things, I'm confident that I'm a better programmer for it: the usual arguments (blah blah, lowers stress, default mode network) deployed in favour of meditation also apply to dancing. It won't work if you're forced into it, and I don't think it's cool to do so, but that's why people can be so evangelistic about it.

[dorchadas]

Any advice on where to start for someone who'd like to learn to dance better at nightclubs?

[doop]

Find a style of music you enjoy listening to, then go to a club that plays it, and start dancing. Keep doing that.

You might find that your taste shifts a bit over time, and that's fine, and it's fine to shop around a bit: the point is to try to find an environment where you can lose yourself in the music. If you're very self-conscious about your dancing then try to find a more underground scene (I started off in industrial/EBM and moved on to psytrance): partly because people are just more serious about the music and less about trying to hook up, partly because even if you're the world's worst dancer it won't matter because people will just assume you're having a great time because you've taken lots of drugs. Be considerate, give people space, and stay hydrated.

Once you've found your groove - once you've found yourself whooping as the beat drops, once you've found that weird moment where the dancefloor moves in unison and dissolved yourself into it, once you've exchanged exhausted happy grins with the person next to you as the lights go up at 7am - then, if you want to, you can start focussing on technique, on learning new tricks and moves, but it doesn't really matter by then. It's not a competitive sport; the point is not to be good at it, the point is to do it.

Drugs are neither necessary nor sufficient.

[dorchadas]

Thanks! I actually like the underground music already, just gotta find venues that do it here in Dublin.