The motivation behind our attraction to good dance moves, and our obsession with the bad ones.
by Kristin Kostick
Sometimes it actually hurts to watch: the rigid torso, the arms’ repetitive flail, fists jabbing at the air, legs all squid-like. It’s like the person is fighting himself, or some invisible specter only he can see. For example: when small-framed Mohammed Kashif Memon comes on stage on America’s Got Talent and solemnly steps to the mic in his baby-blue button-down and khakis and says in his Bengali accent, “Everybody love(s) my dance, yeah,” and when the judges tell him to “Take it away,” he earnestly launches into one of the wimpiest renditions of Bollywood dance this side of the Arabian Sea.
Staring into the crowd with straight-faced candor and beginning a weird sideways shuffle down the stage, he swings his arms about in forced, overly-choreographed gestures, then turns to the side, eyes still expressionless and fixed on the crowd, utterly serious, then quick-jabs the air as if miming some kind of combat. The judges get all wide-eyed, stunned. The audience is dead-quiet. David Hasselhoff looks gentlemanly, trying to give the kid the benefit of the doubt, wondering if this is all a joke, and the other judge–Piers Morgan–looks half insulted, almost angry at the guy’s gall. Sharon Osborne, with her flaming maroon hair, is shrugging in a motherly sort of way, as if to say, “Let him do his thing. Be nice, boys.” The audience is a school of fish, watching the unlucky straggler-fish about to get ripped apart by sharks. Maybe they hope the kid will stop, but he doesn’t, he just keeps getting more earnest, his routine infused with determination. Jerry Springer is backstage watching. He turns to one of many cameras: “He’s gotta have a girlfriend.”
Maybe they hope the kid will stop, but he doesn’t, he just keeps getting more earnest.
And then something unexpected happens. Kashif (whose name in Hindi means explorer, discover, revealer, displayer) is really getting into it now, doing the pan-the-crowd-with-pointed-finger move, and the crowd actually starts going wild with applause. They love it. Kashif is feeding off their synchronized howl, now grabbing both knees in a strangely asexual rendition of the otherwise hyper-sexualized “loose-knee” dance sometimes seen in rap videos (phylum cousin of the ubiquitous “twerk”). By now, Hasselhoff can’t help but smile; he’s rubbing his face with one hand in disbelief, his eyes registering something like glee and horror at once. Osborne is now watching intently, no longer the all-accepting mom but arguably the proud mom. Morgan is nonplussed, but it doesn’t matter, because the crowd is going bonkers as Kashif stomps and jumps onstage in way-too-choreographed-but-still-bad Bollywood mojo, flinging his arms into the air at measured intervals to the beat. Then, like the camp counselor popping into your tent to say, “All the fun is over, go to bed,” the emcee stops the music, and Kashif’s hands flop down to his sides as the crowd’s hoots crescendo and decrescendo because everyone wants to hear what the judges have to say.
Everyone is expecting the ego-slam, for the judges to send Kashif back to Pakistan, or at least to the friendless bowels of the AGT stage-plex. But Morgan leans back in his chair and says, “You… are one of the most extraordinary dancers I’ve ever seen in my life.” That’s all it takes for the crowd to resume their hollers and woots. Morgan hands Kashif over to Hasselhoff in a kind of get-this-guy-off-my-hands way, and Hasselhoff yells, “Kashiiif!!”, Hasselhoff’s face all lit up and plasticky-looking. “Your dance,” he says with excitement, almost breathless, “was really so different, I think it kind of mesmerized the audience.” Kashif is up there taking it all in, trying not to smile, replying with very serious and controlled thank yous. Sharon Osborn similarly congratulates him, but you get the feeling that someone is going to break the spell, going to tell Kashif just how bad he is, that he’s going to go sulking offstage and everything right and true will be restored in the world of Talent. But no one does. Instead, Osborn says, “Fabulous.” Morgan says, “I’m a definite yes.” And Hasselhoff, too, yells “Yes!” The crowd cheers, and contrary to every tenet of meritocracy, Kashif moves forward to the next stage in what will be his very, very short dancing career.
What’s most startling/impressive/inspiring about Kashif’s performance is how much the crowd and judges revered such a terrifically bad act. Which begs the question: why do we love bad dancing so much? Imagine yourself looking on, the initial unease gradually transforming into slightly-troubled pleasure, wavering somewhere between pity and amusement, possibly the only circumstance in which these two emotions so closely coincide, watching someone so totally unaware of how embarrassed he should be but isn’t. Could it be that in the hopeful recesses of Kashif’s heart, the spastic uncoordinated dance steps were actually a guarded lexicon of skill? Even more troubling is what we love about bad dancers–the fact that we can see something (their badness) that they can’t, and we can therefore enjoy some elevated status on account of our greater ability to more accurately and objectively pinpoint the meaning and significance of those floundering, gesticulating indices of social inappropriateness.
Or maybe it’s for the opposite reason, perspective flipped, that we’re catching a rare glimpse of someone fully inhabiting their own personal Coney Island of the Mind, the semi-psychotic space we all have somewhere inside, and it’s just that the Bad Dancer drags it out from under the bed into the daylight, broadcasting it like something to be proud of. Maybe we recognize this as an act of bravery, of empowerment, the extreme faith that someone somewhere will see the genius of these steps, if it takes a lifetime of stage-hopping.
There’s an inspirational narrative, in other words, embedded in the Bad Dance. But for it to truly be the inspiring bird-flip to the established order of Good Dancing, the Bad Dancer would effectively have to know his dancing was considered, by popular consensus, bad, or inherently bad, by his own acumen. The assumption of awareness changes things completely. It brings up intention. Take, for example, the last frat party or wedding you went to where guests got drunk and started dancing. There’s always that one guy who ends up doing the robot, or the late ‘80’s classic Running Man, or the ‘80s hip-hop-inspired Cabbage Patch, or Madonna’s angular, rigid-armed Vogue (previously called “Presentation,” stolen from ‘60s-era Harlem ballrooms). Everyone is looking on and laughing at how bad it is, but he’s laughing with them. He knows how bad it is, and that’s what makes it so good, so fun, how everyone agrees on the badness and are thus brought together on a shared plane that could only be established and subsequently reinforced by stepping outside of the “appropriate” and collectively acknowledging its breach.
There’s an inspirational narrative embedded in the Bad Dance.
But this is significantly different from the Bad Dancer who has no clue how bad he/she is. Think back to that scene in Napoleon Dynamite when N.D. comes onstage for the high school talent show. He’s slack-jawed with huge ‘70’s-era wire frame glasses claiming the upper real estate of his face. His jeans are tucked into black, calf-high moon boots. He stands in the middle of the stage in silence, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. Everyone in the audience looks bored, doubtful. Then the emcee hits play on the cassette player and Napoleon starts easing uncertainly from side to side to a disco-esque Jamiroquai song, nodding his head absently, the whole auditorium quiet but for the loud, out-of-place music.
The magical moment happens with Dynamite suddenly jumps from the sideways shuffle into a wide-legged stance, tossing his head back dramatically, then does a dorky but seemingly purposeful march in a circle, his back now to the crowd and arms lowered in a challenging “come-and-get-it” motion as he stomps backwards to the beat (yes, the white boy actually is on beat), and then suddenly he’s John-Travolta’ing across the stage, punching out invisible enemies, plucking unseen things from the sky, and if you deign to acknowledge it, he’s actually kind of smooth, doing the hug-yourself-then-shimmy-downwards move, a la half-clad Christina Aguilera, suggesting: “Look at this body.”
But the meaning is totally transposed coming from Napoleon, who is now worming and wrenching across the stage, his moves infused with sincerity, hands clenched into “Take-this!” fists, and flapping his arms in pterodactyl-esque slo-mo before deep-squatting and, with impressive coordination, hip-jutting and arm-worming simultaneously, then attempting an ambitious moonwalk in his moonboots. The whole crowd is still silent save for one or two people actually smiling now. Because this isn’t only funny to watch, it’s also strangely painful and satisfying all at once. Napoleon himself has a barely-discernible smile through his deadpan slack-jaw as he delivers his grand finale, hips swinging and arms surging in almost-but-not-quite pop-n-lock. Then comes the rodeo-bull-spanking move, or maybe it’s the lasso move, followed by spin and somersault and awkward rise from the floor, then more convoluted footwork and M.J.-style groin-thrusting. He’s so into it that it takes him a second to realize the music has stopped. The sound of his feet still shuffling onstage is all you hear. N.D. looks down at the edge of the stage, not even at the crowd because he’s too socially inept to know how to acknowledge them post-dance. Instead, he runs limp-legged, arms dangling, offstage.
It’s hard to say what makes Napoleon Dynamite’s performance a now-pervasive pop culture relic of Bad Dancing. I’ve asked a lot–and I mean, a lot–of friends, family, acquaintances, etc. why this Bad Dance is so bad. They say things like, “He’s just so awkward,” or “The guy can move, but he looks so weird, like so serious.” And this goes back to the question about intention. There’s a difference between someone who dances and doesn’t care if they’re “good” or not–but still recognizes they’re pretty bad–and someone who really doesn’t know, simply can’t see how horrendous their moves. Think: Carlton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-air, how proud he looks of his way-exaggerated arm swing, which could knock the daylights out of any normally-distanced bystander. The more oblivious–not to mention proud–the Bad Dancer is, the more fascinated we become, and the more pitifully heart-wrenching and amusing the spectacle.
It’s true: Bad Dancers are easy to make fun of. They bring out our inner bully, even spur us to encourage the Bad Dance (consider the audience’s reaction to Kashif’s Bollywood blitz). It’s a further, more disguised form of bullying, as we’re effectively prolonging the spectacle, unbeknownst to the dancer, so we can continue to experience that strange, guilty pleasure.
What pleasure is this, exactly? Why do we love it so? Upon closer inspection, if you have the stomach to wait it out, the Bad Dance at some point moves beyond humor into a much more strategic social phenomenon, in the same way group foraging or collective punishment are strategic in their own ways. Entertain for a moment: You are the onlooker, on the verge of witnessing one of the most awful forms of pro-social behavior. And I don’t mean the Bad Dance. I mean everything happening around the Bad Dance, everyone’s face expectant, positioned somewhere along the Donnie Darko continuum between “love and “fear,” but mostly hovering in the milky liminal space where the two meet. Some people start to snicker. But what you notice is that, after the first moments of enraptured attention, everyone begins to pull his/her gaze from the Dancer and to set it upon others in the audience. The main act is no longer what interests us, instead it’s others’ reactions to it. You’re looking around to see if the person next to you is judging the Bad Dancer to be equally as bad. You want to know: Is it ok to laugh? Are we all laughing? Are we laughing together?
The more oblivious–not to mention proud–the Bad Dancer is, the more fascinated we become, and the more pitifully heart-wrenching and amusing the spectacle.
Because what if you weren’t. That’s a statement, as much as a question. What if what you considered to be the worst dancing ever turned out to be not just normal, but (G-forbid) even good? Like, Kashif’s cut-n-jab moves revealed to exemplify life’s meaningful struggles; Napolean Dynamite’s loose-kneed dips and swagger indicative of existential uncertainty, the constant wobble of elements in flux. What if the blissed-out roar were not a meter of the crowd’s semi-sick, bullyish pleasure but their true, honest-to-G reverence? It might throw your whole value system for a loop. The oblivion of the Bad Dancer to how bad he/she is is the precise requisite ingredient for our pleasure, where our laughter only persists as long as our over-the-shoulder glances disclose that others in the audience, too, are laughing, thereby reinforcing our value of the Good Dance, whatever that may be.
In 2010, a team of psychologists from the University of Northumbria conducted a study to identify which dance moves separate Good Dancers from Bad Dancers. To the clothing of each of the 15 good-sported men who volunteered, the researchers attached 38 strategically-placed infra-red reflectors, producing bright spots that allowed the movement of every limb and joint to be tracked and studied. And while it may seem a little preposterous to enter deep-analysis mode over how jiggy one’s getting on the dance floor (especially when you consider the study was funded, in all likelihood, by a significant sum of grant money), this was actually serious business. A person’s dance moves, the researchers explained, might have peacock-feather- or silverback-gorilla-level significance for animal behavior, a kind of honest and unfakeable signal of our potential as mates. Remember the age-old question you’ve asked in bars and dance clubs: If he’s a bad dancer, does that mean he’s bad in bed? Or that really hot blonde in the gold lamé and heels who dances like a cardboard box filled with mice, and you’re thinking, No, say it ain’t so.
In other words, the way we dance might have not just social but evolutionary implications. To explore this, the researchers brought a bunch of women into the lab to independently rate the attractiveness and sexual appeal of the videotaped male dancers. What the psychologists found was that Good Dancers have a more varied repertoire of moves, and more moves that involve tilting and twisting the torso and neck. You can see this yourself in a computer simulation of the Good Dancer, somehow constructed from an aggregate of the positively-rated men. Bad Dancers, on the other hand, were highly repetitive, using their arms and legs but not the rest of their bodies, as if the torso were a burlap sack moving only by virtue of the ungainly appendages. Nick Neave, who led the study, says, “When you see brilliant dancers, you’ll see their bodies, heads and necks are all doing ever so slightly different things in time to the music.” There’s a coordinated smoothness there—a smoothness that means something.
Jerry Springer was onto something when he said that thing about Kashif having a girlfriend. He must, with dance moves like that. Of course, Springer was joking, but the simple comment–and the fact that we all understand its humor–stems from a deeper wisdom we all have about the significance of dancing for someone’s appeal as a mate, even if we’re not thinking about it consciously. There’s a message in the movement. Surely this must date back to tribal times, when people were shuffling their feathers and glutei maximi around drum circles in periods of drought, when dancing had the power to alter climatic shifts, to make peace or declare war with neighboring villages.
The same thing holds today on a smaller scale. If you look at Good Dance moves–and I’m not talking tango or waltz or any of the acknowledged formal styles, I’m talking popular culture, dance moves from street corners and music videos and late-night clubs which we’ve agreed upon in our collective imagination as impressive, hard-to-do, super-dope, etc. (e.g. the Moonwalk; any form of break-dancing, well-done pop-n-lock, or even lesser-known dance forms like the “turf” [“Taking up Room on the Floor”], the faith-based-turned-B-Boy “krump;” even the rekindled “Harlem Shake,” originally based on the alcoholic shake of a Harlem resident named Al B)–all of these street-smart moves require a level of skill that make them off-limits to anyone with poor coordination or no time to practice.
When we–the outsiders who can’t do these dances–behold these moves, we’re rightfully captivated, awed. Collectively, there’s something in the sheer coolness of these dances that conveys an enviable sense of effortlessness and ease, something psychologists call “flow,” where everything in life seems to carry you along and you’re just riding it like a luscious wave. There’s no anxiety, no depression, you’re just in it, enjoying. Everything is A-Ok. The Good Dancer who exhibits these traits conveys a sense of mastery over the world, an all-capable persona exuding security and control. It’s as if the world (or the club’s roof) were to come crashing down at any moment, this guy would know to grab the water reserves and trash-bags-to-use-as-face-masks to keep us all alive in the ensuing rubble.
Contrast this with the range of Bad Dance moves (described at length above), which are just the opposite, permeated to their core with awkwardness, unease, the jagged anxiety of social interactions that just don’t click into place. The moves, literally and figuratively, don’t flow seamlessly from one to the next, are more a collage of scraps cut up with dull scissors. They don’t convey a sense of prowess, capability, don’t get you laid, don’t promise your peers confidence and command in times of despair. What they do promise–their proverbial function and source of viewing pleasure–is to rally everyone else in the group around a commonly acknowledged deviance from the norm, with the handy effect of reestablishing that norm and providing a common rug to Get Down upon.
This is survival we’re talking about.
The more we feel like a cohesive group, the more likely we are to spot each other, to be cooperative, buy each other congratulatory drinks, kill the proverbial fowl for our neighbors; and as behavioral ecologists tell us, greater cooperation equals greater survival, both for the individual and for the group. No matter good or bad, then, dancing is a kind of courting. By extension, this is survival we’re talking about, the caliginous machinations of evolution. It might be hard to see this through the flashy disco lights. But the next time you find yourself on a dance floor looking down at your feet or registering the pivot of your hips to some R&B song–or hey, headbanging to Guns ‘n Roses – think back to this. Your personal variant of the Cabbage Patch could be a small but important armature for a beloved social order. Or maybe you’re secretly waiting with poker-faced gusto for someone else to please do the robot–to put things into perspective, set the world aright. Because even if that one guy isn’t getting laid, at least he’s helping the rest of us, by some über-distal causality, to survive and reproduce.
