Dance all around the ... kitchen

Opinion

You should have been there. You should have seen me. I was a dancing machine. I was John Travolta and Justin Timberlake, with a little bit of Beyonce thrown in for good measure.

Everyone in the house was feeling the groove and it was going off. Okay, I should confess, here and now, that the only person actually in the house at the time was me. I was on my own, doing the dishes. The iPod was on shuffle when XTC's Senses Working Overtime came on and, well, something primal took over.

Suddenly at least four of my limbs were working overtime (though not always harmoniously). Just to complete the picture, two of these limbs were wearing Ugg boots, which left marks on the kitchen lino as I danced up my own little storm. I'm not proud of this momentary aberration but neither am I ashamed of it. It is simply something that happens, from time to time, in the privacy of my own home, and it normally ends in me straining some part of my anatomy. I mention it only because we're entering the office/Christmas/summer/New Year's party time of the year, where accidental public dancing is a real danger. I am a firm believer in the notion that says whatever dance style we are socialised with is the one that will stick with us for the rest of our dancing years.

For me this was the late-70s and the early-80s; the era of punk and New Wave music. For a rhythmically challenged white boy from the provinces, this was a Godsend in that all you have to do to dance to punk is, of course, to jump up and down pretty much on the one spot. There is nothing flash about punk/New Wave dancing.

No overtly fancy dance moves involving twirling your dance partner round your head (potentially dropping them on their head); no fiendishly complex disco dancing Night Fever set-pieces to remember. Just jump up and down and, if you quite like the person you're dancing next to, you bump into them a bit and hope they bump you back in a nice way. As far as I was concerned, this sort of dancing was perfect on many, many levels - from combining fun with aerobic fitness to a simple way of overcoming shyness in social situations.

Of course nowadays the problem with this sort of carry-on is not that I look stupid doing it (I have accepted that I will look stupid on the dance floor no matter what genre I am mangling) but that: (a) the energy levels required to overcome the inertia to get my body propelling in an upward/downward direction is, quite frankly, beyond me for any sustained period of time; and (b) when I do manage it I am a danger to those around me. Yes, these days I am much more suited to lateral forms of dance, which means I am, in effect, just like one of those icebergs that have broken off the Antarctic ice-shelf, as I drift aimlessly across the shipping lanes of the dance floor.

Thus I have taken the stance - for the safety of others and the preservation of the scant remains of my dignity - to confine my outbursts of dancing to the privacy of my own home. I shall remain, from this moment on, one of those "I'm dancing on the inside" guys; happily sitting on the sidelines, watching others do the business, dance-wise. I think it will work out for the best, for all concerned, if this is how it goes from here on. Sure, there will be those who will try to tempt me back on to the dance floor.

There will be those who will ply me with alcohol or attempt to take advantage of me when I've already plied myself with alcohol, in order to break down my resolve. But I shall remain resolute in my decision - for the good of humanity. The way I figure it, it takes two to tango (or foxtrot or pogo or any form of dance). There are those who dance and those who watch those who dance. And I am one of the watching sort. This is to be my lot in life.

Except, of course, if someone puts on the Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun, in which case I will have no choice to dance because it is a scientific fact that it is impossible not to dance to Blister in the Sun. But apart from that one song, I shall be steely in my non-dancing resolve. Except in my kitchen, of course: because in my kitchen, I rock - Ugg boots and all.