Poll: How many X Markers Dance?

[Riverkilt]

Most anything except rap or line dancing. Don't do enough these days. Only dance floor in town is in a smoky bar...maybe after the new smoking laws in Arizona kick in will be back for more.

This is from a few months ago after some party. Lady is my red haired kilt lover. We're at the Gunsmoke, the local bar with a dance floor. And yes, it was cold that night.



Kilt is my Black Stewart SportKilt (easy to wash the smoke out). And no not crusading...enjoy your tobacco if you like.

But YES!! I love to dance!

Ron

[Andrewson]

Yes put me down as one of the enthusiastic Scottish Country Dancers. It is especially great to do this kind of dance in a kilt. Once you've tried it in a kilt, you don't want to do it dressed any other way.

[Dreadbelly]

I don't dance, but I think I'd like to. With my wife. Maybe just once or twice.

I have no grace. I am a great shambling shuffling hairy oaf. No grace. None at all.

That, and any time I hold my wife up close, she breaks down giggling and tittering because my beard tickles. I do believe that if we went dancing somehow, she'd giggle her self silly.

[Erisianmonkey]

I don't dance, and nothing short of an amazing looking woman and enough alcohol to drown an elephant can make me. Of course, since my health prevents me from drinking anymore, that means I'll never dance again.

OK, not really, I will once in a great while get moved by the music enough to move my body...but that is very rare. Then again, I'm about the size of a small hippo, so If I get on the dance floor no one else can!

[Macman]

Double post

[Macman]

I love to dance. My first wife and I did ballroom and latin lessons for many years. We found that most events we went to didn't have a big enough dance floor, and the music didn't lend itself well to the dancing we liked to do. Still love to dance, though. Jive, jitterbug, cha-cha, rhumba, waltz, tango, mambo . . . Now, my (new) wife and I have a little motto if we go somewhere where there will be dancing: "First on the floor". When the right music starts up, I just can't not dance.

[wsk]

Don't. It's how my Dad met my Mom. As I was growing up, they were always dancing round the house. But, by the time I was old enough to appreciate girls, I was also old enough to rebel against my father so anything he did I wouldn't. Shot myself in the foot there.

Interestingly, now that I'm much older, I find myself enjoying exactly the things my Dad enjoyed. I love to watch Gene Kelly or any of the other great cinematic dancers dance.

In elementary school the teachers tried to teach us to dance. It was laborious and there weren't any male teachers to show us boys how fun it could be. Teachers shot my other foot.

Once spent a great day at the Wurst Fest in New Braunsfels (sp?), Texas with my Aunt, Uncle, and Grandmother. If we'd have gotten just one more bucket o' beer I'm pretty sure I'd have dragged my Gran onto the dance floor for a polka. It was beginning to look fun.

Completely separate from this discussion, I recently started thinking about dancing and why so many men don't do it. The conclusion that I arrived at is that men of my father's generation did not know how to show their sons that it's ok to enjoy yourself in "non-manly" ways. What a shame.

Of course all of this has come to me now that I'm single again without a partner to share it with. Someday perhaps.

And now, just this morning on NPR they did a piece about ballroom dancing and health. I had learned about this same Italian study earlier somehow, and the tag line then was that one of the benefits the researchers discovered is that ballroom dancing leads to a better sex life. Why didn't they tell me that when I was younger?

[Panache]

...Completely separate from this discussion, I recently started thinking about dancing and why so many men don't do it. The conclusion that I arrived at is that men of my father's generation did not know how to show their sons that it's ok to enjoy yourself in "non-manly" ways. What a shame...

This came up in the conversations I had as well. Hence this thread. I agree that there is a common modern perception that dancing is unmanly, though the success of "Dancing with the Stars" television show (which in truth I have never seen) gives me hope that this will change. There was a time once when a gentleman was expected to know how to shoot, fence, ride, as well as etiquette, dance, and poetry. Those things I didn't get from my parents or school I sought out as a young adult (I've said it before, I watched waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many swashbuckler type movies as a kid). My though is that kilt wearers lean toward a lot of "old fashion"* notions. We have an interest in manners, customs, fashions, and etiquette.

I just hope Sinbad doesn't rebel against all this when he gets to his teens.

Cheers

* At least a modified version that includes most of the good things and leaves racism, sexism, and hygiene issues (amongst others) back in their appropriate centuries.

[David Dalglish]

My wife & I danced a lot when we were Younger, we always managed to get around the floor to most dances. We loved to jive, but I dont dance as much as iI use to, maybe I will start again.

[Rex_Tremende]

Well, I answered "one particular kind," because I mostly do country-western line dancing and two-stepping, which also includes a form of the waltz. Truth be told, I wish I could say I do them all, because I love ballroom dancing, it's just that I haven't mastered any of the steps, and I don't have any place or person with whom I could learn and practice at the moment (nor are lessons in the budget). I do not care for stand-and-wiggle-if-only-I-had-a-pole dancing.

When I was a kid, I avoided sports. I was terrible at it, and I never really enjoyed the win/lose dichotomy. I didn't get much exercise and ended up a chubby kid. I might not have turned out that way if I'd been allowed to follow my interest in dancing, though.

A block from my elementary school there was a "school of dance," a small, gray building that I think was a former residence. I remember the sign included a pair of legs, crossed at the ankles, wearing red and white striped tights. I don't recall ever seeing anyone come or go from that building, but I wanted to learn to dance. When I informed my mother of this, she looked at me sideways with a slightly worried look and said, "That's not something boys do."

My elementary school had an elected activity program, though, where one could choose to learn to do something not on the regular curriculum. In fourth grade, I signed up for dance, and Mrs. Levy choreographed something to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for a dozen girls and probably two boys. It hardly qualified as dancing so much as rhythmic movement. I did learn how to spot, however.

It was not until my senior year of college that I finally got into a pair of tights (not striped), after having dropped about forty pounds the summer before. That year I decided to audition for the chorus of Oklahoma!, but when Miss LuAnn, the ancient choreographer, spotted me messing around in the back of the auditorium doing a series of tours chaînés déboulés, demonstrating to a friend my ability to spot, she cried out, "We found our Will Parker!"

Now, in order to play Will Parker, I had to learn to dance, so Miss LuAnn dragged me, not unwillingly, to her dance studio. I learned a little about tap dance, but never quite got the hang of the time step. I had a blast learning the dance routines for the show.

When the production was over, Miss LuAnn implored me to stay on for the rest of the year and take ballet. I agreed, and later that year I ended up a dancing member of the Montague clan in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

The corps du ballet was comprised of a dozen girls and two guys.

Mother was apparently right.

Regards,
Rex.