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Nah, just go for it.

Honestly though, just feel the beat as best you can and either wayyy overdo it so it's comical in an intentional way or just move a little with the music enough so people don't think you're afraid to dance.

Slow dancing you'll figure out easily enough.

Not just can, but is supposed to be. It's just one of those things you can't worry about too much, because then it just ends up being no good.

I can't dance worth crap. Like I've said before, we had to do an approximately two week dance session in gym during middle school. Three years of torture where I went on to forget everything that happened less than a day after it ended. We were forced to learn the electric slide. That's all, and I can't remember squat. There was some other dance that we learned and again, don't remember a thing. I was forced to do the second, and slow dance. The second my friend stepped in and started dancing with her, I was out of there. Honestly can't believe I moved that fast.

There just has to be a logical explanation, doesn't there?

Yep, just like there is a logical explanation for love.

I'd agree with you if I didn't know to the extent that formalism has come to dominate dance. The second that there is something to learn to participate, and you're expected to learn it, then there is something to worry about.

I'm okay with the idea of free-form dance. Go out on the dance floor, move about, have a good time. Cool.

Of course, some folks aren't okay with that. We can't just let people have fun, we have to give some structure to this s###. Let's invent line-dancing or some such. Now you need not only go out there and move around, you need to move around to the beat, performing elaborately-choreographed, song-specific moves.

Now, I'm sure you could have fun doing this, but it seems an awful lot like a chore to me. Not only are you involving yourself in a generally pointless activity, but you're allocating finite time and effort into learning how specifically to involve yourself in a generally pointless activity that is in no particular manner any better than a free form version of the same activity requiring a great deal less effort and opportunity cost to buy into.

But that's even okay. If people get their kicks by ballroom dancing or whatever, that's cool with me. What annoys me is the social expectation that I should (1) know how to perform some of these formalized dances, (2) be willing to perform these formalized dances, and (3) actually enjoy being forced to perform some of these formalized dances. Add this onto the rigid expectation that I should attend events where such expectations come into play, and you're starting to really bug me.

When I say that I should've learned to dance at some point, I'm not saying that I should've done so because I think it would be enjoyable, I only mean that I should've learned to dance because it's the type of social bullcrap chore that the Great White Father has seen fit to force on everyone.

-Pufer

When on Earth have you been socially stigmatized for not being able to line dance? Or tango, or do the Charleston, or even just ballroom dance? I can't imagine more than 1 in 10 people in my generation have taken any sort of formalized dance lessons (and probably much fewer), and while I suppose it's a useful thing to know in case you happen to marry an English royal or fall into a time-space rift that ends in the 1900s, the idea of anyone losing social standing for not knowing how to do a structured dance in 21st century America seems about as likely as being ostracized for not knowing how to play the lute or tie a timber hitch.

*facepalm*

Uhm... You have a ballroom, and then you have couples dancing together in it. The gentleman leads, holding his partner's opposite hand depending on whether he chose to lead with the left or right hand. The gentleman take his other hand and puts it around his partner's waist, and the lady takes her hand and puts it on her partner's shoulder or neck. Generally this is a dance taken up more often by well acquainted couples or those who have been married, but friends take up the dance occasionally as well...

What's the difference between that and slow dancing?

Make a "To Do List" has been on my "To Do List".

*Optional, turn 18 first