Tell Me, Which Dance Style / Move Do You Use? (1)

Do you also reveal your age by the way you dance?

Writing about dancing aboard the onboard disco, in yesterday's blog made me go off on this tangent. Dancing and our styles. Heck, I realized yesterday, that I might only know the disco-move. Oh yes, that one!

Watching any dance floor of any function, you can guess any dancer's age rather well, don't you think? We all learned to dance in our teens and sadly most of us stopped learning after that. The style of our teenage years is what we still use decades later! At least I tend to....How about you?

Let's check out a few highlights of dance moves through the decades:
The 1950-1960's

• If you learned to dance in that time frame, well done, you are a great and varied dancer.
• You can Rock&Roll the proper way. Cascading off your partners back and doing a slide through, is second nature to you.
• You know the Twist and do it fabulously well. My Mum put in a twist awhile ago and Bob was speechless at her skill! In her defense, it was a song one could only twist to.
• You know how to slow dance the nice way. Holding hands but not glued all over your partner.
• In fact, you still know the art of flirting with your partner. All in a chaste way of course.

Let's look at the 1970's....

• Most hand holding during dancing was a no-no. The free-style was introduced.
• With free-style dance moves, you could venture out on the dance floor by yourself. No one would notice as you could just turn a few times in this and that direction to make it seem you had a dance partner.
• The iconic ' Saturday Night Fever ' started a whole lot of new dance steps. I am pretty sure that the Jane Fonda type of aerobics classes were invented on the dance floor of Studio 54.
• The awkward foot shuffle was ample as a dance. Add a few hip swings along with an arm stretch or two, and you were a good dancer.

Now for the 1980's...

• The moonwalk. Need I say more. Could that be why Bob likes to wear different colour socks at all times? In the eighties, showing your socks and their colour was the thing to do. Bob being a rebel, just mixed the colours!
• In the 80's it was customary to have your shades with you. You couldn't leave them on the table so you wore them while dancing.
• The crush had its first appearance. Most dance floors I remember were always too small and we were all packed like sardines. Sweaty armpits were never seen, as the 70's arm stretch was frowned upon. Of course in this era, doing a 70's John Travolta like move ensured you a big space on the dance floor. Whispers of " check out the old foggy " could be heard...
• I nearly forgot, that our hair was our crowning glory in every sense of the word. No gal went out dancing without a can of hairspray in her handbag. Only after 3 hours of vigourous dancing would that fringe drop. Oh my God,we thought we were so cool!

The 90's...

• Black was the colour to wear along with the Bobby-look: T-shirt worn over a long sleeve one. All Star trainers, the grubbier the better. Oh and tight pants. In fact the pants were so tight, that often the only way to enjoy the dance floor, was above it...remember all those folks carried above the crowd atop a Mexican wave of hands.
• The music got Grungier and acoustics were non-present. The lights got fragmented and it made our robotic moves even more so.
• The 90's was almost the decade of anti-moves. No one had a definitive style of movement. Of course a lot of folks wouldn't have notice either way!

Check in tomorrow for part 2...

Biggi