Whatever happened to U.S. social dance culture?

Question

Outside of shows and exhibitions, it seems - unlike other countries - few of our citizens actually know how to dance.

I appreciate your attempt to redeem our culture, Samba Queen, but I think may have reiterated my point for me - social dance has become the sole property of those that can afford it. Considering the real cost of dancing (nothing), this is outrageous!

Answer 1

Boy, are you right about that!!! However, there are alot of places in the U.S. that still hold dance as a recreation every weekend. For instance, in Louisiana. When I was in elementary...way back in the 50's, we would play our records and really dance at recess. I'm talking about jibberbuy and swing dances. You learned to dance in school and at home and it was part of who you were. Now, we still dance, although both of us are in our 50's; where we go to dance every weekend, it's filled with people on up to almost 90 years old and they all dance...it's our culture. I think kids are really missing out on alot not to have dance in their social lives.....REAL DANCING. It's a very healthy and sexy activity. I guess younguns' aren't interested in knowing steps and such, only bumping-grinding, which gets old real quick. They can't follow a two-step. I love to see the old guys make fools of the young girls that think they can dance...PawPaw drags them all over the floor and they have this look of horron on their faces! OK....now who wants to cha-cha????

Answer 2

I have to disagree somewhat with Sassy OLD Broad. I am in California (Inland Empire) and we have dances every weekend and there are a lot of young people who attend our dances (my own kids included!). If you watch "So You Think You Can Dance" you will see a couple of the competitors on the show - Benji Schwimmer and Heidi Groskreutz. They come from Buddy & Laurie Schwimmer's 5-6-7-8 Dance Studio in Redlands, which is where a lot of young people (and us older folk too) take dance instruction. If you watch Benji and Heidi dance on the show then you have an idea of the level of dance we do here in this area. So, yes, our dances are packed with a lot of great dancers and a good balance of young and old(er) people alike.

Now to address the issue of not very many public dances anymore - even though we still have a lot of places to dance here, some of our favorite places have gone out of business because it's expensive to run a ballroom. The rents here are expensive and the air conditioning is expensive. You can't charge a whole lot to get into a dance otherwise people won't come.

There are a lot more young people dancing than you give them credit for. You just won't see them out in nightclubs. You gott find 'em in the ballrooms!