Dance Fever

Posted by Cynical Sarah on July 20, 2007

Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m a dance-a-holic. Not that I do a lot of dancing myself besides the occasional booty shaking in my living room, but I’m completely hooked on television dance shows.

Here I am on a beautiful Sunday afternoon sitting on my couch watching the So You Think You Can Dance final few episodes for what has to be the third or fourth time in the past few months. You could say I’ve been swept up in the giant wave of reality dance shows along with millions of others out there.

No matter how many times I’ve seen an episode of this show, I still can’t help but tune in when I see it on again. Of course, for something a little fresher for me, I also had Dancing with the Stars to capture my attention some evenings the past couple months as well.

So what is it about dancing that’s got my, and many other’s, attention?

I think for Dancing with the Stars it has to do mainly with seeing celebrities possibly make fools of themselves. There’s nothing better than seeing a star, who already has it made, potentially fall flat on their face just for our amusement.

But there is more to it too. Seeing these stars step out of their comfort zone and learn to dance is proof that anyone can at least learn a little bit about how to shake your groove thing with a partner. Anyone can learn the steps and partner up with someone even if it doesn’t necessarily translate to becoming the best dancer on the planet. (Sorry Billy Ray – you had a lot of heart, but it’s amazing your fans carried you as far as they did.)

Hell, if Clyde “the Glide” Drexler can learn a few steps and Heather Mills can actually make it look good with a fake leg, it’s gotta be within easy reach for us regular joe schmoe’s as well.

Of course, watching So You Think You Can Dance pretty much erases any such thought as you see people performing super-human dance feats. Here are these aspiring pro dancers showing the rest of us exactly why not everyone can become true dancers. I honestly have a hard time believing anything other than an alien life form can perform some of the dance moves they do.

What the two shows have in common though is they show how two people can become totally in sync, performing pretty much as one entity to the music. There’s something inherently romantic about two people being so in tune with each other that they can perform flawlessly together on the dance floor.

That kind of dancing has been a bit of a lost art. There aren’t many guys anymore who really know how to dance like that. If you can even drag one onto the dance floor, most likely what you’re going to get from the guy is a Night at the Roxbury head bob and a hip hop bounce.

Hopefully it’s not just us girls who are watching all these dance shows and getting inspired. I can see it already, lots and lots of dance studios filled with women learning to dance with each other. Either that or a lot disgruntled husbands forced to take a class and then will probably refuse to use what they learned ever again.

- Sarah L. Polson

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Tags: celebrities, humor, television

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