How To Break Out Of Your Shell And Dance

An authoritative guide for awkward nerds who can’t quite get lost in the music

This is not Part 1 of “How To Be A Good Dancer”. This article is Part 0—this is for people who want to be able to dance at all, but can’t quite break out of their shell. Maybe you’ve been to a couple of raves; you find yourself drawn to it, but you can’t get beyond standing in the back and nodding awkwardly. Maybe you’ve just seen videos and think “That looks so cool, but I could never…” One way or another, you’re self conscious and moving along with the music doesn’t come naturally to you. You don’t quite “get it”, but you know you really want to. If this feels at all like you, read on:

DISCLAIMER: None of the following is medical advice; always listen to your body and seek help if you feel yourself getting sick.

Image from Wikipedia

Step 1: (Optional) Be Hot

Not really much to say here, just generally makes everything in life easier—probably achievable for like 60% of people and 85% of Humans.¹

Step 2: Read Bronze Age Mindset (Pervert, B.A. 2018)

This one is not optional. It’s full of generalisable insights on the dynamics of human interaction and the dance floor. You’ll thank me later.

Step 3: Pick a Rave

So now that you’re armed with some important background knowledge, it’s time to pick a rave. The critical things here are that it be:

• Indoor venue

• In the winter

• Relatively well-attended

Bonus points if the venue is (literally) underground, as this will activate ancestral memories of cave-based ecstatic initiatory rituals.

Step 4: Don’t Buy Tickets In Advance

It’s important that the rave you’re going to does, in fact, sell door tickets as well as advance tickets, so make sure to look this up ahead of time.

Step 5: Pick An Outfit

You probably have at least *some* good features (if not, see Step 1), so show them off. If you’re at a loss for how to do this, reach out to the nearest circuit gays or rave girlies in your social graph and ask for advice.

Step 6: Get In Line Early

This is pretty self-explanatory. You didn’t buy tickets in advance, and you want to make sure you get in, so you’ve got to be there early. How early? Oh, say an hour before doors, just to be safe. Will you be comically early and look silly? Possibly! But you might also have a lovely chat with a beautiful domme and her boy toy while you’re waiting in line.

Step 7: Dancing

So, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the point of those specific instructions is that you should be freezing by now. Like, “worried if you’re actually going to get hypothermia” freezing. You’ve been standing around in a (hopefully) skimpy outfit for north of an hour in February, and now you’re finally in the venue. The idea is that now you physically have no choice but to hit the dance floor and get moving just to warm up your mortal flesh.

Here you can, optionally, hit the bar for one (1) White Claw. This will help your temperature a bit and serve to lower your inhibitions. You don’t actually want to be inebriated, though, so you should probably stick to one standard drink, or no more than two if you have a very high tolerance.

And from there, go dance! You’ll naturally try to work your way towards the front-centre of the crowd because, again, you’re freezing and any spare body heat helps. You may still feel awkward, but every time you do, remind yourself that you need to keep your blood pumping and keep going. If you’re still having trouble knowing exactly what to do with your body, try and mimic the people in front of you—I promise no one is watching you closely enough to notice—but go light on the footwork until you start to get a feel for things. With any luck, by the end of the night you’ll feel a little more natural and a little more able to lose yourself in the music. You may not be exactly where you want to be, but you’ll have made some progress that you can build on.

Okay, but like, seriously, how do I learn to dance?

I don’t actually know; at present I can only share what worked for me and changed my relationship to dance from one of a painful, awkward social performance to something that I really enjoy in an embodied way. Maybe this will work for you; I hope it helps, even if you don’t try to replicate my process in its entirety. As to what happens after that, I can’t exactly say. I said at the top that this isn’t “Part 1 of How To Be A Good Dancer”, and that’s not an article I can write because I feel like I’m still working my way there, but doing what I outlined above did take that journey from a chore that I thought I would get around to at some point to a fun thing I’m actively seeking out. If you get to this point and are looking for direction, maybe find a style of partner dance you like and sign up for some classes, or find videos where creators walk you through popular EDM dance movements. Also, consider taking up yoga or tai chi and starting to get a feel for what the witches and bodyworkers mean when they talk about “energy.”

Good luck!

1. See Dune; Chapter 1, the Reverend Mother’s conversation with Paul.