it was 15-20 years ago and I am still scarred by it emotionally.
Oh no :( If you want to eliminate this, here’s some unsolicited help, from one shy and awkward nerd to another: I didn’t like dancing either before undergrad, but I really liked hanging out with my friends, and my friends went out dancing all the time. Now I do like dancing, and I also know why I didn’t like it before.
Certain cultures see things as music and dance as a Serious Fine Art, to be Performed On Stage for the Benefit of the Audience, and you have no business doing it it you’re not good at it. For other cultures, music and dance are natural self expression practiced since childhood with parents and uncles and aunts, and no one cares if you’re a tone deaf klutz. (This is the source of stereotypes about which groups can dance and which can’t). If you were raised in the first culture, going on the dance floor is kind of like going on stage with no preparation—pretty scary!
If you were raised in the first culture, you first have to unlearn the emotional association of dancing/singing with Performing On Stage. This is accomplished by drinking the often conveniently available and potently anxiolytic alcohol to remove feelings of self-consciousness. After 4-7 sessions the association will mostly vanish and you won’t need alcohol anymore. (This is also why it’s easier to get drunk people singing.)
As a corollary to un-learning the idea that dancing is about impressing people, you must also unlearn the idea that dancing is inherently and primarily some sort of mating dance aimed at impressing the opposite gender. Salsa is explicitly heterosexual, sure, but you can dance with your male friends, you can dance with your family, you can dance all by yourself in a corner. There’s nothing inherently sexual there. That’s just you psychologically framing it as a Performance again...I never had this particular misconception, so I don’t have any advice for unlearning it, but I think it’s mostly a subset of classifying the activity under “Perform” rather than under “play and fun” combined with never having been exposed to spontaneous dancing in a family-friendly setting.
Obviously, if you barely ever dance, you’re psychologically on stage, and you are under the impression that the main purpose of this activity is to ask a girl out using the medium of interpretive dance, or something, an activity which comes easily to small children will feel like an extremely high-pressure situation to you. Un-learn this.
If I were to distill (pun intended) this into practical advice: Drink until you aren’t nervous the first 5-6 times (less alcohol is needed each time), go with people who you trust to not make fun of you, enjoy the music and sing along (no one can hear you), and just jump up and down or step side to side or whatever until you stop feeling self conscious and start getting into it. Oh, you also, you have to like the music being played, or you won’t ever “get into it”.
I think your ideas would be excellent for me 15 years ago, now we never go out to dance because our 1 year old would feel really lonely alone at home, and I have a drinking problem anyway, the last thing I need is more. At 37 I think I can do the rest of my life without it. But I think your advice needs to be gotten out to younger “mes” definitely.
(To be fair, I think that is how I developed that drinking problem. It began with loosening up to dance or to approach girls. Didn’t work but liked the feeling. Since I mostly ended up doing nothing just standing there, getting drunk and going home, I associated that drunk feel with “being entertained, going out like a normal person not staying home like a nerd” and then it went a bit downhill from here—and it was still at 19.)
As for culture, I am just more or less standar (Central) Euro, none of that impressive Argentinian stage stuff, neither that wonderfully careless joy-dancing religious Jews do. I think, in between. Normal club stuff.
Oh no :( If you want to eliminate this, here’s some unsolicited help, from one shy and awkward nerd to another: I didn’t like dancing either before undergrad, but I really liked hanging out with my friends, and my friends went out dancing all the time. Now I do like dancing, and I also know why I didn’t like it before.
Certain cultures see things as music and dance as a Serious Fine Art, to be Performed On Stage for the Benefit of the Audience, and you have no business doing it it you’re not good at it. For other cultures, music and dance are natural self expression practiced since childhood with parents and uncles and aunts, and no one cares if you’re a tone deaf klutz. (This is the source of stereotypes about which groups can dance and which can’t). If you were raised in the first culture, going on the dance floor is kind of like going on stage with no preparation—pretty scary!
If you were raised in the first culture, you first have to unlearn the emotional association of dancing/singing with Performing On Stage. This is accomplished by drinking the often conveniently available and potently anxiolytic alcohol to remove feelings of self-consciousness. After 4-7 sessions the association will mostly vanish and you won’t need alcohol anymore. (This is also why it’s easier to get drunk people singing.)
As a corollary to un-learning the idea that dancing is about impressing people, you must also unlearn the idea that dancing is inherently and primarily some sort of mating dance aimed at impressing the opposite gender. Salsa is explicitly heterosexual, sure, but you can dance with your male friends, you can dance with your family, you can dance all by yourself in a corner. There’s nothing inherently sexual there. That’s just you psychologically framing it as a Performance again...I never had this particular misconception, so I don’t have any advice for unlearning it, but I think it’s mostly a subset of classifying the activity under “Perform” rather than under “play and fun” combined with never having been exposed to spontaneous dancing in a family-friendly setting.
Obviously, if you barely ever dance, you’re psychologically on stage, and you are under the impression that the main purpose of this activity is to ask a girl out using the medium of interpretive dance, or something, an activity which comes easily to small children will feel like an extremely high-pressure situation to you. Un-learn this.
If I were to distill (pun intended) this into practical advice: Drink until you aren’t nervous the first 5-6 times (less alcohol is needed each time), go with people who you trust to not make fun of you, enjoy the music and sing along (no one can hear you), and just jump up and down or step side to side or whatever until you stop feeling self conscious and start getting into it. Oh, you also, you have to like the music being played, or you won’t ever “get into it”.
I think your ideas would be excellent for me 15 years ago, now we never go out to dance because our 1 year old would feel really lonely alone at home, and I have a drinking problem anyway, the last thing I need is more. At 37 I think I can do the rest of my life without it. But I think your advice needs to be gotten out to younger “mes” definitely.
(To be fair, I think that is how I developed that drinking problem. It began with loosening up to dance or to approach girls. Didn’t work but liked the feeling. Since I mostly ended up doing nothing just standing there, getting drunk and going home, I associated that drunk feel with “being entertained, going out like a normal person not staying home like a nerd” and then it went a bit downhill from here—and it was still at 19.)
As for culture, I am just more or less standar (Central) Euro, none of that impressive Argentinian stage stuff, neither that wonderfully careless joy-dancing religious Jews do. I think, in between. Normal club stuff.