The good news is that most people (especially men) have absolutely no idea what they’re doing on a dancefloor, so the bar for being seen as a good dancer by the general public is quite low. The bad news is that you can’t think your way into being a good dancer, so you will have to practise.
The easiest way to develop dance skills is to take some sort of dance class. It doesn’t really matter what kind, because they all involve the same transferrable meta-skills. If you’re looking at developing improvised solo dancing skills, I’d recommend a solo vernacular dance style, like jazz, tap or hip-hop.
If you wanted to learn a partnered dance (and I wish everyone did, because it’s great), you could look into one of the many varieties of partnered dance available. If that doesn’t interest you, learning the mechanics of lead/follow would probably be a needless distraction.
If you don’t want to attend a class for whatever reason, you have other options. The internet has a wealth of dance-related resources. This is the first in a long series of YouTube videos teaching the iconic dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Don’t laugh. The instructor on the video takes you through warm-ups, exercises and drills, and then eventually pieces together the choreography of the routine.
Warm-ups, exercises and drills are more important in this case than the overall routine. They teach you body awareness, how to move specific parts of your body in isolation to others, and help put certain types of rhythm and movement into your muscle memory. Eventually you should be able to carry out dance movements without thinking.
There are other songs than Thriller, but this is just to get the ball rolling. Try making similar movements to other music. Think about whether it feels good to move in a certain way to a certain song. Think about the shape of the music. Is it big, loud, brash, quiet, precise? If the music were an object, what would that object look like? What would it move like? Try moving like that.
Above all, the easiest way to get good at anything is to enjoy it, and to want to do it. Find something dance-related that you enjoy doing, and that exposes you to novel ideas, and then keep doing it.
A few questions:
Do you do any other activities requiring physical coordination, such as martial arts, sports, juggling, yoga, etc.?
What kinds of music do you enjoy listening to? Do any make you tap your feet or fingers?
You say you’re non-musical. Can you readily identify the beat in a piece of music? Can you tell if a note is higher or lower than the previous one?
Do you find you learn better from directed instruction, or personal experimentation?
No.
I enjoy many kinds of music, including pop music like Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Sometimes. If there is no obvious bass, or if the pattern is not simple, I have difficulties.
Yes.
I don’t know. I do learn most things by myself, but this does not mean that directed instruction would not be superior in some cases.
The good news is that most people (especially men) have absolutely no idea what they’re doing on a dancefloor, so the bar for being seen as a good dancer by the general public is quite low. The bad news is that you can’t think your way into being a good dancer, so you will have to practise.
The easiest way to develop dance skills is to take some sort of dance class. It doesn’t really matter what kind, because they all involve the same transferrable meta-skills. If you’re looking at developing improvised solo dancing skills, I’d recommend a solo vernacular dance style, like jazz, tap or hip-hop.
If you wanted to learn a partnered dance (and I wish everyone did, because it’s great), you could look into one of the many varieties of partnered dance available. If that doesn’t interest you, learning the mechanics of lead/follow would probably be a needless distraction.
If you don’t want to attend a class for whatever reason, you have other options. The internet has a wealth of dance-related resources. This is the first in a long series of YouTube videos teaching the iconic dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Don’t laugh. The instructor on the video takes you through warm-ups, exercises and drills, and then eventually pieces together the choreography of the routine.
Warm-ups, exercises and drills are more important in this case than the overall routine. They teach you body awareness, how to move specific parts of your body in isolation to others, and help put certain types of rhythm and movement into your muscle memory. Eventually you should be able to carry out dance movements without thinking.
There are other songs than Thriller, but this is just to get the ball rolling. Try making similar movements to other music. Think about whether it feels good to move in a certain way to a certain song. Think about the shape of the music. Is it big, loud, brash, quiet, precise? If the music were an object, what would that object look like? What would it move like? Try moving like that.
Above all, the easiest way to get good at anything is to enjoy it, and to want to do it. Find something dance-related that you enjoy doing, and that exposes you to novel ideas, and then keep doing it.