Fear of Dancing

last Tuesday when I landed on my left foot and something said twang, it meant it. I limped the next day, and the day after, and even a third day. At times during the week my leg felt numb in the knee and ankle joints. The sensation came and went but by the following Tuesday, I had to admit with heavy heart that I couldn't tap dance. I stayed home and missed my sixth lesson, a victim of foul Lord Hop.

It gave me time to think, though. I was wondering what it is about dancing that scares some of us so much. Most of the guys I know manifest a deep dread of the dance floor. It's not particular to my generation, either; I have male friends in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties, all of whom start pulling at their collar like Rodney Dangerfield if the threat of dancing in public looms.

In fact, a few years back the company Christmas party was held in a hotel ballroom featuring a large dance floor. My two closest co-workers eyed the dance floor all through the meal as if it might conceal trap doors, pop-up laser turrets, and hidden shocktrodes. What they were really thinking was, After dinner my wife is going to make me dance. This threat hung tangibly over the table for much of the meal. Sure enough, we each wound up dancing with our wives. But not until we got a few drinks in us. Why does it require several cups of courage to do something as simple and joyful as moving to a beat?

That particular night, once I got out there on the floor, I could spot at least two guys who danced worse than me, so I relaxed. And with a buxom dancer for a wife, I can feel confident no one is looking at me. So I tried to be a good sport and let Annette have a good time. But when we finally returned to our table for a break, my buddy hissed indignantly, "You've been dancing for six songs!" From this, I learned that the wives were grading on the curve and I was ruining it for the other guys, who hoped "two songs" would be a passing grade.

Another friend at work, Corey, is a dedicated video gamer. Corey admitted to me that he tried (and enjoyed) Dance Dance Revolution in the privacy of his own basement, but only after drawing all the curtains and closing all the doors. I asked him the other day what scared him about dancing. He answered, "I never like to be seen doing things I can't do well. I'm the type that, if I were going to take dance lessons, I'd practice in my basement beforehand so I'd already be good when I got to the lesson."

That probably sums it up for most guys. There are lots of reasons why we fear dance, but the Prime Reason is, None of us want to be made fun of. Maybe the issue is that simple. (Well, not to Corey; he also said, "It's boring! It's repetitive! When I dance with my wife, after two or three songs I feel, There, that was fun but I'm done now. But once they start dancing, women never want to stop!" I'm unqualified to discuss this topic, since I have been known to dance for six songs. My co-workers inform me that this makes me a woman.)

I have another reason why public dancing makes me uncomfortable. I introduce this reason with a joke that is funny only in the "you had to be there" sense:

Q: Why do Baptists forbid having sexual intercourse while standing?
A: It might lead to dancing.

I grew up in an evangelical Baptist church. You have heard about evangelicals lately. They're the activists who live in the red states, and re-elected Bush as part of a faith-based initiative to drive Democrats to suicide.

You might be wondering, What do evangelicals teach in those churches of theirs? My answer: nobody knows. Oh sure, every denomination has an official doctrine it endorses and systematically teaches. But at any given church, what the head pastor believes will usually vary from the official denominational stance by at least a little, and maybe by a lot. Next, each person in the congregation sees God through a complex personal filter made of family tradition, culture, superstition, psychoses, past experiences, errata (for example, thinking that "God helps those who help themselves" is in the Bible) and perhaps, just to add zip, genuine revelation. Each one of them adds their individual spin to the pastor's individual spin. The collision of all these ideals synthesizes into some Organic Whole. That whole is what the local congregation actually promotes. Whether they like it or not.

This Organic Whole is hard for any individual to shape. It stands in defiance of authority, and often stands in defiance of reason. It might use the pulpit pastor as a mouthpiece, but it also might use a Type A personality who started a home Bible study on the side and invites only the members he thinks are spiritually cool. An uneducated Sunday School teacher might invent a doctrine on the spot while teaching a room full of second-graders, thus adding to the Organic Whole. The Organic Whole can result in a church giving up in disgust on the denomination that founded them. So what will you learn when you attend your local church? It depends on who you listen to while you're there.

I don't think the Baptist church I grew up in officially opposed dancing. I can't remember a single sermon or Sunday School class on the topic. But somehow I learned from the Organic Whole that dancing was to be avoided. And finally one night, someone who was possibly operating on their own hook came right out with it. I am not making up the following.

I was at Hume Lake Christian Camp in the summer before entering tenth grade. Hume Lake gathers together several church youth groups at a time, and our first night there, hundreds of us teenagers watched the short film they showed us. Using pseudo-scientific vocabulary and a stentorian voice-over, the film explained how amplified bass guitar sets up sound waves that resonate in a distinctive way with your spinal fluid. These vibrations of your spinal fluid affect your nerve endings and inhibitions in a way that make you (…wait for it…) evil.

Yes, the voice-over actually used the word "evil" while showing us a freeze-frame of a dancing teen girl. Her hair was flying and her expression looked pained. My friend Jack and I snickered when the announcer said it, and laughed ourselves sick all week as it became our favorite inside joke. We injected it into every conversation. "Sorry, my spinal fluid was making me evil, could you repeat what you just said?"

Hume Lake had religious services every morning and evening, and our church sent us there for an entire week. The house band played folk and bluegrass, which by implication was Not Evil. But they had an electric bass guitar. I thought Jack was the height of wit and daring when he showed the electric bass to the camp director and, in deadpan sincerity, asked, "I play a little bass and I want to stay out of trouble. Could you show me which of the notes are evil?"

But the camp director had the last laugh. Convinced the question meant he was getting through to today's young people, he involved Jack in an excruciatingly dull theological conversation for 30 minutes, with Jack trying to get away for 25 of them.

So. Dancing and rock music were evil. Buck the system, and dull guys in ties would turn their mind-numbing powers on you. They won every argument by the simple expedient of exhausting any teen who contradicted them. The tongue is mightier than the attention span.

When you grow up in a culture that discourages dancing, does not model it, and expresses itself through music that has no beat, by the time you're old enough to dance whenever you damn well feel like it … it's too late. You don't know how! This has contributed to my fear of dancing, even until now. [Note to hair-splitters: if you're thinking, "Technically, hymns have a beat," fine, you try dancing to "How Great Thou Art" or "The Old Rugged Cross." I'll watch.]

At age 19, I was a shipping clerk at a Christian television station run by one of those religious TV couples with improbable hairstyles. The CEO's elderly mother struck up a conversation with me, sweetly asking my name, what I did at the station, and so on. When she learned I was married, she asked what my wife did. I said, "She's a dance instructor." Her face collapsed in sorrow. "Oh," she sympathized, "So she's not a Christian?"

Apparently dancing is the criteria God will judge us each by. When we die, we form two lines as we await His judgment. Signs overhead will label one line "Boogeying" and the other "Non-Boogeying." If you're thinking, well, to play it safe I'll just stand in the non-boogeying line, think again. You'll be standing next to the Hume Lake camp director and the guy who did the film voice-over. I'm going to get in the other line with King David, who "danced before the Lord with all his might" (2 Samuel 6:14). I can't wait to see what happens when I slip him a pair of tap shoes.

Until that day, I kinda wish bass guitar did make me evil. Then I could dance without a shadow of guilt. ##