Dancing is good for the body and the soul! Feeling the rhythm of the music, getting your blood flowing and letting loose with good friends all make for a joyful and cathartic experience. Of course, all these benefits would be in the absolute red if you ever glimpsed an outsider perspective of what you look like while pathetically step-touching your way around the dance floor. Here’s how to keep doing it anyway even though if you saw yourself, you would never move your body to music again.
Go on instinct.
Getting down and dirty on the dance floor doesn’t require any classic training! It’s all about letting your body express how the music moves you. This should be organic. Of course, if you really think of it, you might be unconsciously copying all the moves of a more confident person in the dance group next to you, but badly. Worse yet, you might let muscle memory take over and start doing the choreo from that one musical theater you did in high school. Oh, my God. Did you just step-ball-change? People saw that.
Let the music be your guide.
Dancing isn’t about looking cool; it’s about having fun! So when that middle school dance throwback comes on, cut fucking loose! You’re jumping up and down, you’re thrashing, you have as much command over your body and grace as you did when you were dancing to this at a bar mitzvah trying to make the Oleh’s older cousins not notice your braces (impossible). But this isn’t about anyone else. It really can’t be, because anyone who sees you will never be able to think of you sexually ever again. Just be grateful you can’t see yourself.
Be prepared to end up in the background of someone’s Instagram story.
We pray that there is no video of you busting a humiliating move in existence, but even ending up in the background of a photo — arms contorted, mouth angry and agape from singing along to “Mr. Brightside” — could ruin your self-image for a month minimum. If this occurs, just assure yourself that they caught a bad still, and this all looked totally fine in action. None of this is true, but sometimes (often) we have to lie to ourselves simply to go on.
You’ve only got one life, so dance like nobody’s watching! Even though God is watching, and your ancestors, and possibly your crush?? Okay, maybe you should just go hang out at the bar for now.
