Truth Hurts: Dance, You Fools!

Our columnist has some advice for anyone afraid to boogie at the club

The truth is, you’re never too young or old to dance.

Dance. If you’re at the club, dance. At a party that’s getting out of control, dance. At a bar next to the jukebox, dance. At your wedding, dance. Dance like your feet are on fire. Sweat like a love donkey and boogie. Shake it off, boldly, for everyone to see. To paraphrase the great American poet Bonnie Raitt, give them something to talk about.

According to a recent article in the popular counterculture newspaper The Wall Street Journal, there’s a new, unspoken, but increasingly followed, social rule: do not dance in public, lest someone record it and throw it on social media. Writer Elias Leight quotes choreographer and professor Sydney Skybetter: “Dance like anybody could be watching and that footage will follow you forever.”

Leight also spoke with several Gen Zers, who confirmed there’s a “feeling” that getting funky on the dance floor could make you “a big joke or the next meme.” Even DJs and other artists are complaining. In an announcement about his album Don’t Tap the Glass, rapper Tyler, the Creator wrote: “I asked some friends why they don’t dance in public, and some said because of the fear of being filmed.” The article also delves into a viral Reddit thread that asked why younger people aren’t dancing. “I’m scared of what would ppl think of me, or even worse, record me and make fun of me,” posted one 19-year-old.

That a generation has been intimidated by Silicon Valley into squelching the ancient human impulse to jump, wiggle, hoot, and holler is beyond depressing. The only way to fight back is to gather in dark, hot, loud holy places and dissolve into a billion floating, throbbing molecules.

The old cliché goes “dance like no one is looking,” but that’s not quite right. It’s cute, but there’s no juice. How about: Dance like the whole world is watching, and they should, because everyone who dares to flaunt their effervescent swagger and rattle those skeleton bones is a goddamn hero. Dance, you fools. That is my advice.

This might surprise you, but I was not built for dancing. I once dated an aspiring fashionista who explained to me there were five body types: apple, pear, hourglass, rectangle, and inverted triangle. I suggested a sixth, mine, which I described as “warthog.” I’m not saying God cursed me. He just didn’t design me to groove. But I assure you, I have, briefly, grooved.

I have danced with wild abandon. I can do the robot, the running man, and the Macarena. I can bump and grind. I have lost myself in a mosh pit and waved my hands in the air like I just don’t...well, you know.

I have a great affection for dancers. I grew up watching musicals like Singing in the Rain and West Side Story, and my favorite music videos featured dancers like Paula Abdul and Madonna. I was also dance-pilled by Dirty Dancing.

Like any child of the 80s, I was forced to watch the 1987 movie about an inappropriate relationship between a grown man from the wrong side of the tracks and a sheltered, barely 18-year-old rich girl named Baby. They don’t have much in common, but they both speak the language of the slow mambo. Do you think Johnny cared when he crashed the annual talent show at Kellerman’s resort and danced with Baby in front of all the stick-in-the-muds and old fogeys? No. He did not, and neither did she. They wanted the whole room to stare because love demands a spotlight; Love is rude, love is nude, love lives with its robe open. Love wants to be looked at.

The movie taught me a valuable lesson at a young age: Dancing is a good way to woo someone. As I’ve aged, this thesis proved itself again and again. Sex, you see, is a very silly tango that involves lots of bouncing and undulating and flailing.

It’s not an activity for the shy, although I am sympathetic to those of us who are insecure about our bodies. The dance floor, however, is one of the most effective ways to advertise your willingness to be in your skin, to live in the moment, and to let ‘er rip, as they say.

I’m not naturally confident, just in case you think I am. In college, I mistakenly took an advanced dance class. I had planned to take an easy elective, and the moment I walked into a rehearsal room filled with gorgeous, lithe dance majors, I realized that this was not that class.

But before I could moonwalk my way out of there, the professor, a middle-aged man who looked like an angel or a vampire or some kind of fuckable immortal demigod, gently touched my shoulder and said, “Why don’t you stay?”

He was beautiful and gentle, and if he had said, “Why don’t you give me a kidney?” I would have torn it out of my side.

So I stayed, for a few classes at least, and here’s what I learned there: So long as I was willing to risk looking like a dork, the experienced dancers respected me.

And when I was matched with them in a contact improv exercise, they took over. They were all strong and impossibly graceful. They met me where I was, understood my own relationship with gravity, and danced with me, on my terms.

I looked great, even if I have the rhythm of a broken washing machine.

Thunk-thunk-thunk.

I’m thankful I grew up during a time when there were far fewer unblinking, always-recording eyes everywhere. There are times when I feel like Johnny on the inside, but I probably look like a walking heart attack on the outside. I have sprained my ankle dancing. I have pushed my way through crowds, exhausted and wheezing.

As I’ve gotten older and more dignified—I am silver fox-ish, you know—I’m presented with fewer opportunities to dance, but the last time I really cut a rug was the summer of 2024, during my wedding, which I had never planned on having, because I had never, not in all my years, met a woman I’d wanted to marry as much as the woman who is, now, my wife. The entire restaurant stopped chewing and started gawking the moment I got on one knee to propose as my face leaked from every orifice. I never thought I’d meet someone who I knew—I just knew—was the person I wanted to brush my teeth with, once in the morning, and once before bed.

So we said our vows and laughed and barely ate, and she dragged me onto the dance floor.

I danced for her. I danced for us. I danced because we love each other. Moves were busted, feet were loosed. We danced to Mitski cheek-to-cheek like it was prom. I jumped like a human pogo stick to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” I danced with my 11-year-old best man. I danced with old friends and family. I had the time of my life. I was a nimble warthog, light on my hooves, and there’s video of it.

So many videos.

John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.