Especially if you’re male, this is a great way to meet people! The reason for this is of course that dancing is an art that attracts many more women than men. This is probably because male dancers are considered by some to be somewhat effete or gay, yet there is nothing gay at all about holding a girl in your arms! Many dance styles are very sexy! You can certainly end up touching bums, breasts, and similar erotic areas, and it’s normal to do this! How many social situations can you do that in? It’s also very good for building confidence if you are lacking in this department.

Dance styles

Salsa is a very saucy dance! Think spice while dancing it. It’s currently very popular, uses open hold, and it is one of the most fun dances you can do! It involves some very sexy moves. This one is very popular, and it’s a good one to get started with! Get out there and start sizzling!

Cha cha cha has four beats to the bar, with the last beat being a double beat, so it’s 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1… The name comes from the sound of the feet that occur when the “4 and 1″ beat comes in, where three steps are used: quick, quick, slow. It uses “open hold,” with quite a distance between the partners.

Foxtrot is the most popular couple’s style. It can be danced to any music that has four beats to the bar with a swing feel, and it can either be fast or slow. The hold is “cuddle hold,” which has you pressed up against your partner, and you don’t change hold a lot. Often where you see a ballroom scene in a film, the Foxtrot is what most people are doing.

Waltz has three beats to the bar; most other styles have two or four. There are styles varying from the Viennese waltz (fast) to the Boston (slow). Danced in “close hold,” it is perhaps a more formal ballroom style, and again your bodies are touching.

Quickstep is, as the name suggests, fast. As with the Foxtrot, it uses swing music with four beats to the bar. Using close hold, it is excellent for exercise!

Rock ‘n’ Roll is also very energetic! Just think songs like “Rock around the Clock,” and many of the dances performed in Grease. An open hold is used, and it can be danced to a lot of music. Jive is similar, but slightly more formal.

Samba involves quite a bit of movement, and mainly has its own particular rhythm. It’s mostly danced in open hold. This style has a carnival feel to it, given its Brazilian roots. You tend to move about the floor a lot with this style.

Tango has very close body contact, and its own rhythm with two beats to the bar. It’s a much more rigid style, with lots of snap head movement.

Rumba has its own rhythm. An open hold is used, and the dance tells a story of passionate seduction, with the girl rejecting the guy’s advances until she succumbs!

Of course, there are many more styles than those listed above. I just wanted to give you a flavour of some of the more popular styles that can be performed.

A success story

I’d like to share my story of success with you. I decided to try a local dance class that taught salsa, merengue and cha cha cha. I wanted to go to the first lesson, but because of a martial arts accident that broke a bone in my hand, it would have been impractical to dance at that time. This meant that I went along about six weeks after the first class. I thought this would be no real problem for me, as I play various musical instruments, so my sense of rhythm is keen, and, being a martial artist, I am used to studying and copying forms.

The first week I went, I saw that most people already had a partner. I had to dance with the female teacher! This was useful for me, because it enabled me to learn quite quickly. (There was no chance of romance there, though, as the two teachers are married to each other.) In fact, I wasn’t looking for romance; I was just going along to learn how to dance! I did realise that I might meet someone there, though! The ratio of girls to guys was probably about 70:30.

On the second week, before the lesson started, I went around and asked a fair number of girls what they thought of the dancing, and whether they needed a male dance partner (me). Most of them were very nice, but they had already been dancing with their (female) partner for some time, so they did not wish to change that. One of them said she already had a partner, but then danced on her own and with the male teacher, so I thought that she simply had a lack of confidence and let it go at that.

I went about three or four more times, and the same situation continued, with me dancing with the female teacher, and the “lone girl” dancing with the male teacher. I think her regular partner turned up on one of those weeks. When it came to the fifth or sixth week, before the dancing started, I said to her, “If your regular partner doesn’t show tonight, would you like to dance with me instead?” She agreed to this.

So, I now had a dance partner, albeit not a regular one. Her regular partner did not show up very often, and when he did, I reverted to dancing with the female teacher. However, before too long, she decided to change to me as her regular partner.

We were both local enough to the venue to be able to walk home, and the start of this journey involved us going the same way, so we used to have a little chat during this process. I then started walking her home before returning to my home. Eventually we started dating, and at the time of writing we have been going out for about ten months!

So, that’s my story of success. I hope it has inspired you to try dancing. Whether you are male or female, it is a beautiful art; it keeps you fit; and it’s a way of building confidence. I wish you success with your dancing!