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Dancing: Dismiss it or go for it

I've mentioned before about how much I like dancing, which is an excellent way to get in some exercise. But like the other things I've written about in the past couple weeks, that, too, can be quite the undertaking in one's, ahem, "afternoon" (as opposed to twilight) years.

I go to quite a few events, many of which involve dancing. I know there'll be dancing when I see that telltale, removable wooden dance floor that we'd better take care to avoid tripping over when we're getting up to dance or simply walking across the event room.

Trouble with dancing at this age: The music gets to sounding good and you get to feeling good at that particular moment. You forget that your leg or knee has already been protesting somewhat and you suddenly believe you're 25 again. So you start "dropping it like it's hot." Forty-eight hours later, you're reaching for the "Icy like it's hot."

Well, that was Hubby. Yours Truly can barely hold it like it's warm.

I haven't regularly kept up with popular dances since the days of the Running Man, immortalized by M.C. Hammer, and the Cabbage Patch. Sporadically, I'll pick up a dance, especially if it's a simple line dance. I say simple, because some line dances are like choreographed Broadway show performance numbers, and I ain't the one. If it's easy enough, I'll try to catch on. The Electric Slide ... crazy easy. The Wobble? Also simple but I had to learn how to do it by watching Youtube.com. The Cupid Shuffle, also crazy-easy. Cha-Cha Slide? Hey, the guy gives instructions.

Another dance I tried to learn by watching Youtube is the Whip/Nae Nae, which has been around a few years; which I hear is a hit at weddings and which probably every child age 10 and under has perfected to a T. The song and the dance that go with it are both so silly as to be catchy. Complicating it is the fact that it seems to be open to interpretation.

As for the singles dances, I'm old enough to remember such '70s dances like the Funky Chicken and the Funky Penguin. I look at those to see how many dances I can recognize before I start to lose track. Start to see where I began skipping dances, like the Hump de Hump and the Tootsie Roll. Never learned to Walk It Out or do the Dougie. Missed the Soulja Boy entirely. Did I learn the macarena? Yes, and now can't remember the way the hands are supposed to go. Didn't attempt that "One Legged Chicken" dance where you grab your ankle and thrust your bent leg backward and forward; that dance is for people with thin thighs ... period. And to all of you who learned the choreography to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" ... well, I hate you.

So on the dance floor I usually do my default "Mom Dancing," immortalized by Jimmy Fallon and former first lady Michelle Obama and also on YouTube. You do enough hand and hip moves to try to look cool, but you're not really doing much. (Fallon's demonstration of "Dad Dancing" was the same but with nary an ounce of coolness.) I combine mom moves with various, modified Zumba moves and, miraculously, have gotten compliments on my dancing. While I'm doing that, at least several couples my age and older are doing the ballroom dances they learned at the schools that teach them ... schools I keep saying I'd like to attend, especially since partners dancing has not been a part of my forte. Tough to be in that nether land, too old to do the hip-hop stuff ... definitely too proper to twerk ... but also unable to fox trot or tango.

So to those who think it's too late to catch some legendary dance moves, here's a short list of the four "forget it" dances (for those who dislike throwing their backs out) and the four "try it" dances for middle-agers.

The "forget it" dances: The Pop and Lock. Any kind of break dancing. The Kid 'N Play. The Twist -- it looks easy but watch it. The "try it" dances: The Electric Slide. The Sugarhill Gang's "Jump on It" dance. That finger-in-the-air, hip-shaking Saturday Night Fever dance. The Whip/Nae Nae (make your own version).

For those who need dance-move tutorials or just like to watch, YouYube, as in so many other ways, proves priceless. Most entertaining are those "evolution of dance" videos, where the subject is demonstrating the dance spanning multiple decades.

Just skip the twerking. Bad for all ages.

So just email, email, email:

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Style on 11/12/2017

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