Dancing?
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Topics not related to music
Forum Name: General discussions
Forum Description: Discuss any topic at all that is not music-related
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=99415
Printed Date: August 24 2025 at 04:03
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Topic: Dancing?
Posted By: Gerinski
Subject: Dancing?
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 03:03
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A common characteristic among my few progger friends is that none of us is fond of dancing, and if we ever try we are pretty bad at it (if we ever 'dance' to our beloved Prog songs it's frequently more airplaying than actually dancing). Which in a sense might sound strange since we are music lovers and have a decent sense of rhythm. Being musical and being accustomed to understand complex rhythms could in principle be an advantage for one's ability to dancing. I guess that culturally we grew up with dancing being associated to either our parents generation (big band music etc) or to disco, neither of which did fit with our vision of what good rock music should be like, and unconsciously we rejected developing a taste for dancing? What about you?
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Replies:
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 03:10
What's dancing? ... No, no, I'm serious: what is it really for? It has no practical use, it's not a form of artistic expression. Its aesthetic value is obscure to me, if it's there at all. The very knowledge that some people get the drive to move to music in a way that is recognized as dancing to this day mystifies me. I used to do some trad. Russian folk dancing back in school. Boy, I was a tool!  Didn't know why I was doing it.But, Gerard, like you and your progger friends, I do get the drive to react, to move to music. (The Mahavishnu Orchestra or Porcupine Tree, anybody?) I can "get down". Isn't dancing a physical reaction to music?
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 03:51
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I can dance to everything. I don't care how I look, and I couldn't give a rat's ass about what others think of me. Maybe that's key to understanding, and indeed commencing with, dancing? I don't know, but I have on quite a few occasions been complimented on the way that I move on various dancefloors, so I guess I must be doing something right. I'm not a huge fan of the ol' swing low Sally one-two-three one-two-three bow and turn - move your female around the box. I remember having to take a salsa course in high school though which was damn fun. I guess it's what Americans call prom night, but here in Denmark it's called Årsfest (The Annual Year Party or something to that effect...) and the party is often centred around the French dance of Lancier, but this year they were bringing in an authentic salsa band to follow the traditional proceedings. Meaning that 6 months prior to Årsfesten, we started having salsa lessons in the gym. Seeing as it wasn't mandatory to be there, it turned out I was the only guy that showed up. Neither of my friends were interested. That meant all the girls in the world for yours truly - plus the fact that I actually learned to shake dat ass....latin style. Also I've been part of the underground electronic scene in Copenhagen for a good while now, and I gather most people there like to dance. It's not an odd thing to do, and there are just as many men doing strange moves and jitters as there are women. Anyways, this kind of dancing really speaks to me. The music becomes this hypnotic entity, and if you're able to let your inhibitions go and just move about to the beats and swirling soundscapes, then you sometimes get elevated to a place where Shamans and Indians normally only venture. You communicate with your body and the music, and even if you've never met the people surrounding you, you sense a connection there beyond what you'd ever be able to deduce from mere talking. The dancing becomes an otherworldly language, and you along with everyone around becomes this living breathing mass of flesh - all attuned into the same vibe and flow. To some of you that may come off as Hippiedippy non-sense dressed in modern electronic sounds, but when you live and breathe it - if only for a weekend, you'll know what I'm on about. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:10
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^ the ArseFest? that sounds kinky lol
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Posted By: Kirillov
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:14
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My wife teaches salsa. She tells me that I've got a better feel for rhythm than a lot of people. I put that down to listening to prog, and appreciating its rhythms. I can shake it too. |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:14
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.....not 'A' but 'Å'  ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:17
 Two proggers salsaing? There are surely stranger things out there. Scott Walker's recent oevre for instance. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Kirillov wrote:Posted By: Kirillov
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:21
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Posted By: UMUR
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 04:26
inhibitions yes, that´s always been an issue for me. Even when I´m drunk like hell I can´t dance. I feel incredibly silly. Maybe if the Places I went actually played music worth dancing to, like "Unquestionable Presence" by Atheist, then I´d lose my inhibitions and dance like a madman  ------------- http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/" rel="nofollow - Metal Music Archives https://rateyourmusic.com/~UMUR" rel="nofollow - UMUR on RYM |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 05:01
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I'd like to see that ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: rushfan4
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 05:33
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Nope. Not gonna do it. ------------- 
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Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 05:45
Not even to Roll The Bones?
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Posted By: PrognosticMind
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 05:52
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I have waaaay more rhythm and sense of time when playing an instrument than I do flailing my skinny ass around on the dance floor .
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Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 06:00
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I hear the beat, and jump out of my seat, but I can't compete, cause I'm a....
DANCIN' FOOOOOOOOOL I'm a DANCIN' FOOOOOOOOOL No, I'm afraid I'm the classic example of a music snob with a stick up my butt, and consider dancing to be gauche and non-intellectual. I used to do it, at least as a means of parodying the "art of the dance", which was more like synchronized swimming without the water. My wife and I did such an "interpretive dance routine" at our wedding in front of everybody, so everybody remembers me that way. ------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 06:04
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From seeing your moves on stage (YouTube thingy), I can vividly imagine you going about such a dance. I am myself a great patron of swimdancing. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: rushfan4
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 06:48
These guys display some of my best moves.
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Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 06:54
It's for picking up girls. It's a male fertility ritual.
Unless you count pogoing & headbanging then I'm not much of a dancer, though I have been know to do a little chair dancing at particularly funky concert. The last gig I danced at was probably Alamaailman Vasarat at RIO, those guys swing. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Blacksword
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:08
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Dancing seems to be mostly about attracting the opposite sex. I am good at neither. Dancing means as much to me as collecting moss samples. ------------- Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy! |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:32
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It's not that I'm into the sausage, but I feel just as comfortable dancing around with a bunch of my guy friends. Sometimes it's even preferable if you're doing crazy moves that often will scare off the feminine creatures. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:45
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If jumping around shaking your hair in response to some rhythmic aural simulation (ie "the freak-out") is considered dancing, then I am aware of the phenomenon and there may be some people still living who may have witnessed me in the throws of such an activity at various gigs at sometime in the past. The modern equivalent of this would be called the head-bang, a method of musically stimulated unrestrained upper body movement that probably derives from this archaic hippy-dance. Probably. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:46
and listening to Prog is an ideal female repellent, so Prog lover and not dancer = worst possible combination if what you want is chasing ladies
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:48
Now we're talking! ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:55
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As for Gerard's astute observation about how prog fans often have a well developed sense of rhythm, that may be true, but that just means that the classic 4/4 dancing meter just leaves us wanting. ------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:58
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I once did kind of like the punk concert crashing-into-each-other style of dancing, but at my age, I have to seriously worry about getting injured nowadays.
------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 07:59
Of course the embodiment (I use the word selectively) of this is Stacia dancing to Hawkwind, but with more clothes on... Mostly. ------------- What? |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:01
With my bulk and lack of coordinating I worry more about causing injury. ------------- What? |
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:02
------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:03
The ol' shower dance eh? Fun times. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:05
I'm not suggesting that you were wild, but there was potential for some moves had the stage been a little more vivacious, yes indeed. ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:09
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Sometimes the argument that 'Prog is for listening to with attention, not for dancing to it' is used. David is it true that if you dance to the music you loose ability to listen to it? perhaps that's why danceable music is necessarily simple or repetitive, because you can not focus on it anyway?
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 08:18
Nah it's not like that at all. When you really get into it, the beat starts to implement itself inside you like a natural heartbeat. This makes dancing almost superfluous because it's your body doing the talking without having to check things with upstairs all the time. The upstairs though is able to pick out everything in the music and similarly dance to it without ever feeling that something gets lost. I know what you mean by that btw - sometimes when you're at gigs people sing along so loudly, that they're incapable of hearing what the singer is on about. I've done this too at Metallica shows  The electronic get-togethers I'm talking about though are an entirely different thing. In one way it's all about the music.....but it's also about the dance and the secret unspoken lingo.------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 09:19
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Being serious for a moment (yeah, right). The difference between "prog dancing" and real dancing is that you cannot be rhythmic in irrational meters and obviously attempting such to poly-rhythms (if it were physically possible) would be injurious to ones health. If your left foot was stepping out to 13/8 time while the right is attempting 7/16 then it wouldn't take many bars before your feet were on opposite sides of the dance floor. Feet are better suited to simple time signatures like the waltz (left-right-together and repeat) and the march (left-right-repeat ad infinitum). In Prog dancing the feet remain rooted to the spot, perambulation is neither required nor is it desirable and any notion of keeping time with the rhythm is formally dispensed with. If you must move your feet then it is necessary to create a polymeter rhythm between your feet and whatever time signature the band decides to play in, i.e. stick to 3/4 or 2/4 time and let the musicians worry about the difficult stuff (follow that simple rule and you can dance to anything). Even us gifted with feet in matching pairs can give a passable impression of someone with two left feet if we attempt an irrational meter. You can also put aside any notion of "swing" or other such gyrations that begin from the hips, such provocative gestures are unwelcome and frowned upon - if you wouldn't attempt such motion in front of an elderly female relative then no one will want to see it performed in time to Starship Trooper or Mysterious Semblance in the Strand of Nightmares (however appropriate it may seem at the time). The same is true of the modern practice known as twerking to the beat, any one attempting that to a Prog epic is likely to require the professional expertise of a chiropractor to remedy any resulting spinal injury.Like the feet, the lower body movement is ill-advised and all thoughts of rhythmic movement to the beat is unnecessary and impractical, we can extend this to upper-body movement too. The fundamental tenet of Prog dancing is to ignore the beat and any rhythm you may feel inclined to move too because sure as eggs are eggs you will either get it wrong, or the music will change meter without warning and you will end up looking foolish. The only part of your anatomy that is permitted to move in any relationship to the rhythm is your hair, and only then if it is of sufficient length to create a display worthy of a peacock. If you want to impress the ladies, be a peacock not a jitter-bug. This just leaves the melody and that is the core of all Prog dancing. Melody is good, we like melody. Moving to the melody is expressive and cerebral, you can do this while listening to the music instead of that emotional thing of just feeling it. Here we can use our hands to gesticulate the notes, it's air-guitar without the imaginary guitar, air-keyboards without having to get the chord-shapes right or worry about left-right coordination. The result is drawing patterns in the air, it is an expression of the music and can be an emphasis to the lyric (admit it, you are singing along at this stage, you are Peter Gabriel/Jon Anderson/Steven Wilson/etc, the guy on stage is just a projection of what's going on in your head). In a nutshell, Prog dancing is like doing ballet while sitting down. With practice the rest of your body will follow the lead set by the hands, just as a Prog singer moves his body to the music ours will do the same. Even a Prog concert can have a mosh pit, albeit more sedate and dignified than at your typical Slipknot gig.
------------- What? |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 09:56
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While sitting on my desk chair, I have attempted to air-play the feet of the drumming (in that style sometimes used by some drummers where you do not keep your heels leaning on the pedal but lift the whole foot instead) while air-playing the hands of the keyboards and banging my head to a mix of the rhythm and the melody. I guess if I filmed it and photoshopped to erase the chair, I would look like a puppet genuinely dancing to Prog being pulled by the Prog Masters' strings
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 10:00
It's also something to do with one's surroundings methinks. I mean, this doesn't exactly invite dancing in me: While this  ....on the other hand does. The bottom one is incidentally also a pretty fair representation of the parties I attend  ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: The T
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:19
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I abhor dancing. ------------- 
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Posted By: The Doctor
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:28
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I can't dance. I can't talk. The only thing about me is the way I walk.
Someone had to say it. ------------- I can understand your anger at me, but what did the horse I rode in on ever do to you? |
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:29
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Dancing is the reaction of those clueless enough to interpret 'repeating yourself' to be worthy of interpretation. ------------- 
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Posted By: Nogbad_The_Bad
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:43
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I was at an Ozric Tentacles gig recently and there was a lot of groovy swaying going on, though as Dean said not much foot movement. More like hippy dippy peace & love swaying. ------------- Ian Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/ |
Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:43
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Why not? ------------- |
Posted By: Polymorphia
Date Posted: August 22 2014 at 11:56
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I dance behind instruments mostly. ------------- https://dreamwindow.bandcamp.com/releases" rel="nofollow - My Music 
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Posted By: Metalmarsh89
Date Posted: August 23 2014 at 13:53
Maybe Superconductor. I've tried Blues Dancing a couple of times. I've figured out I'm not particularly good at dancing, but I still haven't decided whether I like it or not. ------------- Want to play mafia? Visit http://www.mafiathesyndicate.com" rel="nofollow - here . |
Posted By: A Person
Date Posted: August 23 2014 at 13:56
| I've never danced and I'm too shy to try. |
Posted By: twseel
Date Posted: August 23 2014 at 14:03
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i like dancing, i like headbanging, tapdancing, manic random dancing, salsa, pretend-ballet, dancing without rhythm, fingersnapping, pretend-conducting, hatbanging, movin' like bernie, marching, floor-rolling and ass-shaking i also think of dancing as an art form
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Posted By: dr wu23
Date Posted: August 24 2014 at 09:28
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing
but the type the boys are talking about is more akin to gyrating at a party, concert, dance club, etc
At my age the only dancing I do anymore is the foxtrot at weddings.
 ------------- One does nothing yet nothing is left undone. Haquin |