"Dance," they told me. "Chris, come on. You can do it."
"Get up from the ground," they told me. "Chris, come on. You can do it."
"Don't worry about her feet," they told me. "She's OK. Chris, come on. You can do it."
"Chris, watch where you're dancing," they told me. "Watch it!" they screamed.
"Run," they told me. "The cops are coming! We'll hide the body."
Does this sound familiar? Are you a white male who has never taken a dance class, excluding ballroom in sixth grade -- when you would sit on the room's all-male side, staring at that one couple dancing, partly jealous of them, but partly OK with it, since you thought dancing made you pregnant? Are you a white male who still thinks this? If you are, I think you can empathize when I say that I, a white male, cannot dance, and that when I do, I always send hundreds of people into unstoppable laughing fits, which take years and countless viewings of "Schindler's List" to end.
So I'm not a talented dancer even though, I will admit, I've taken dance classes in the past. Oh, no, not that type of dancing. I didn't take ballet for 12 years and can now pirouette on cue. I can't even keep my balance on cue. Instead, I took a few dance classes in high school to prepare for an acting role in "A Chorus Line." These classes would have been terrible had I not had to wear tights. Sarcasm. Tights are the most uncomfortable type of clothing ever, and the only clothes that come close are ones that are on fire.
These dancing classes involved ballet and jazz, and, understandably, the choreographer often grew exasperated with me:
Choreographer: Chris! Look more graceful!
Me: What am I doing wrong?
Choreographer: You're just standing there, humping the air. You're not even dressed.
When I brought this ballet and jazz to college, though, I was not greeted with the same success I had after a performance of "A Chorus Line," when my parents would congratulate me and comment that I made a better daughter than son. Jazz dancing is really nothing like frat dancing. Rather than flamboyant hand movements, there are people dipping; rather than graceful leaps, people are grinding; and rather than synchronized movements, people are throwing up in bathrooms.
When I went to a frat house for the first time, for instance, I was very confused about what was happening. These dancers reminded me of those great experiments I love performing late at night after a few beers where you throw some cheese into a large tub of rats and watch how crazy they become. The only difference is the rats stop when the cheese has been eaten, while frat floor dancers wait until their sweat accumulation rivals the Pacific.
After I recovered from that initial sight of party dancing (which, oddly enough, made me crave both women and cheese), I thought about hiring the old choreographer to teach me how to grind. Besides the fact he no longer answers my phone calls, I didn't follow through with this plan because I could assume what he'd say:
Choreographer: Chris! Look more graceful!
Me: What am I doing wrong?
Choreographer: Try humping the air more. And get undressed.
I'm not the only white male who can't dance, either. Most can't. Why, in general, are we so awful at dancing? We've been to enough parties that by this point we should have learned through imitation. Indeed, mimicry is even the American white male's greatest skill! When everybody and their ministers of war were throwing revolutions in the 1700s, our forefathers were right behind them, metaphorically (and literally) grinding the trend. Then there's the white American Dick Cheney, who for years has been attempting to look like a potato.
White males, however, haven't yet learned to dance well. We watch, observe, jot notes, study, study, study and then go onto the dance floor, only to look like a metronome because our one move involves us swinging our hips back and forth, back and forth. I'm not sure what we need to learn first: how to bend our knees while dancing or how to double-task swaying with holding in our urine.
Hopefully one day we'll learn how to dip and/or do the "Cha Cha Slide" without appearing like the girl from "The Exorcist." In an attempt to catalyze this transition, I'm starting a new organization called "University Grinders," which will meet twice a week to discuss what the hell a "cha cha" is. Please, join today! And don't worry, free pizza, cookies and tights will be provided at the first meeting.
Chris' column runs weekly Mondays. He can be reached at shuptrine@cavalierdaily.com.
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