It’s been a problem many women have struggled with most of their life. Getting a dance partner. As many as 65% or more men don’t like to dance. The same survey said 89% of men have to be dragged to the dance floor. (1) I’m lucky if I can get one slow dance and one fast dance out of my husband.
The gap between women wanting to dance and men willing to dance worsens as we age. As we age, women are a larger percentage of the population. In our senior community, there are over 200 single women. Yet on community surveys about music events, single women say that they don’t go to events that offer dancing because they are single. They didn’t say they didn’t like the music. To me, it implies they don’t go because they lack a dance partner.
Seniors dancing at a community event
Venues that offer dancing, such as cruise lines, realize this. They hire male dancers. But I heard it through the grapevine that while our community used to hire men to dance with the women, they no longer do because it’s gotten too expensive.
What to do? One thought. I noticed Latino men love to dance. So I could move to Mexico. Or maybe I could move to Texas, it's closer and men love to line dance there. No, I prefer salsa.
But moving seems a bit drastic. It should be easier to find someone who likes to dance and doesn’t have a partner. Since we know it’s unlikely we’d find a single, dancing man, that would be another woman.
Dance-loving women are used to female partners. As early as grade school, girls learned if they wanted to dance they’d better start dancing with other girls. In high school, we’d dance with other girls at sock hops. When we got older, we danced with other women at weddings.
Yet it seems many women become reluctant to do that as they get older. I was taking pictures at a dance and I saw a friend bouncing to the music so I asked her if she wanted to dance. She declined. It might have been because only two other couples were on the floor. I wonder if she would have said yes if there were more couples. For the rest of that program, I didn’t see women dancing with women. But I was assured by my friend several women were dancing with women at our New Year’s Party,
It’s ashamed we sit during our favorite song because we don’t have a partner. It’s not only fun, a 2019 New York Times article called dancing the kale of exercise – providing cognitive and physical benefits. (2) A 2017 German study comparing the brain benefits of dance and interval training found that while both increased the area brain critical for learning, memory, and equilibrium, only dance improved balance. And another study found tango dancing was associated with better balance and gait in older adults. Since falls are the top cause of injury and death among elderly people, dancing can be a potent tool in extending one’s life.
Why all of the sudden, at an age when we should be drinking in the last of our life, are we sitting on the sidelines when our favorite dance song plays? Are we embarrassed? Are more self-conscious than in our younger years? Our bodies don’t move as fluidly as before. The dance floor has fewer people so we are more visible. But, as Mark Twain says, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” They usually aren’t. They are watching the performers.
Ana - Enjoying the music and "Dancing with Herself"
At the last concert with the opportunity to dance, a woman was dancing by her herself. Yeah! I loved to see her enjoying dancing. Now I’ll stop looking for that partner. In the words of Billy Idol, “When there’s nothing to prove and nothing to lose, well I’m Dancing with Myself.” (4)
Or in the words of another famous song, I Hope You Dance. (4)
References
Peter Moore, A Third of Men Never Dance, YouGovAmerica.com, Nov 13, 2016
Friedman, Marilyn, Is Dancing the Kale of Exercise?, New York Times,
Michael Haederle, The Human Condition, Why Men Don’t Dance, LA Times.com, April 29, 1992
Dancing With Myself, Songfacts.com, Billy Idol says the song is about Japanese kids at a Tokyo disco "dancing with themselves" in a nightclub. The kids would dance in a pogo style up and down. According to Idol it can have another connotation, but I like one comment on the post, “Be alone, or not, be yourself; you don't need to fit into what others say is "normal' to be accepted. Just BE YOURSELF, even if it means being BY YOURSELF. Enjoy life. Dance like nobody's watching or even with you. . .
Lee Ann Womack, I Hope You Dance
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