What You Tell Your Friends About Why You Dance
I once worked with an instructor who also waited tables at a large Italian restaurant, and he told me something interesting about how the other guys on the staff reacted to his dancing. When they were all together, they would razz him unmercifully. But when it was one-on-one, they were curious and full of questions. If you take up dancing as a hobby, your friends will probably have questions too, so take some time to think about why you dance.
There are many reasons people choose to pursue a particular hobby (including dancing), and most of them fall into two categories: the rational and the emotional. In this post I’m going to focus on the rational. These are the clear (and socially acceptable) benefits that you can tell your friends and colleagues without feeling silly.
Dancing is great for relaxation and stress relief. We teach a lot of people with high stress jobs, and I believe it’s at least partly because of this. In addition to the physical component that burns off excess stress hormones, the mental focus needed to learn new steps pretty much blots out any nagging thoughts. Most people leave a lesson feeling refreshed and energized.
Dancing is good exercise. You can do it anywhere you have some space, you don’t need any special equipment, and it’s more fun than running on a treadmill. The number of calories burned and toning effects vary not only by the type of dance, but by how you dance. A gentle social rumba might be equivalent to a stroll around the block, while a full-on cha cha is more like running sprints. In other words, dance is adaptable to your goals and current fitness level.
Sometimes learning to dance is important to meet social obligations. My partner tells a story of a young army officer he once knew that always made it a point to dance with the wives of his superiors at military balls. The husbands were so grateful (or so the story goes) that he became a favorite among them and quickly rose through the ranks. True or not, the premise holds. If you regularly attend functions where there is dancing, you’ll be much more effective if you can participate.
Related to developing general social competence is preparing for a specific event. There are many possibilities, from teens learning to waltz for a cotillion, to boomers wanting to do the hustle at a 70’s-themed class reunion, to retirees going on a cruise. The biggie, of course, is weddings. First dance, father-daughter, mother-son – weddings are full of spotlight moments on the dance floor. And many parents will learn to dance together for the first time because of the momentousness of the occasion.
This is far from an exhaustive list, and every person will have their own set of rational reasons for pursuing this crazy hobby. So, what are you going to tell your friends about why you dance?
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