Me no dance
Any form of dance is a public mating ritual ... akin to vertical foreplay.
I have written before about my disposition towards dancing, in a previous article explaining the absence of high school dances in Japan. In brief, I don’t dance first because I don’t want to. Second, because I think it looks ridiculous and so I feel silly doing it. And, third, because dancing is basically vertical sex in public, to which I disagree on both esthetic and moral grounds. More correctly, dancing is more akin to vertical foreplay than to vertical intercourse itself. So there you have it.
Any form of dance is a public mating ritual. Tango is a classic example, but I include classical ballet; disco dancing; square dancing; hula; Navajo religious rites; even people who dance alone, by themselves, either to music or with a partner in their heads. The human body is built for a lot of things, reproduction being far from the least, and dancing is a way of publicly showing our equipment off to others. To that extent we may say that it is a virtue in that by showing ourselves off to others we contribute to the survival of the species by attracting prospective mates leading to reproduction. So public mating rituals are necessary, practical and somewhat appropriate if they can be contained - by chaperones, or by social sanctions. But what I dislike is the gratuitous display of one’s appealing flesh protected behind the multiple simultaneous social prohibitions against sex: no sex in public; no paying for sex; no underage sex; no forced sex; no premarital sex; no adulterous sex; no incestuous sex, etc. If we spent half the time devoted to something else that we devote to proscribing sexual behavior, who knows what we could accomplish? Dancing is a statement, “Look at my body! But don’t touch!!” It’s intolerable. Why is it permissible?
I dislike gratuitous displays of flesh protected behind the multiple imultaneous social prohibitions against sex.
Despite what some people think, I am actually a fairly conservative fellow on many matters. The older I get the more I appreciate the fundamentalist Muslim view of women’s clothing and place in society. But not only women, because I think more modesty all around, among both sexes, might be appropriate. Or not.
I understand males decorating themselves to impress the females, because I do it, too. But not in the form of dancing. The eacock shows his tail feathers. The soldier shows his medals. The magpie builds his nest. My decoration consists of the predictable menu of my generation: pierce, tattoo, jewelry. But, since most of my accessorizing is concealed under my clothes it can be denounced as a selfish indulgence more than, or perhaps even not at all a practical lure for sex. I say that my adornment falls not within the purview of mating customs so much as within the framework of tribalism. I mean, my adornment is my tribal identification. My tribe doesn’t dance - it prays. Or, preys. I forget.