Just Dance.

If you've read my zine before, you have read a variation of this article...it's a thought pattern I extol frequently.  This was my fourth article for The Current, Etc:


I am always extolling the virtues of dance.    In my opinion, there’s no purer form of expression than the declaration of dance.  Dance brings joy into your soul effectively counteracting any despair I might have caused getting you to listen to The Smiths in the last issue.  Seriously, I defy you to be sad while you’re tripping the light fantastic.  You can’t do it!

Here are 3 proven ways to get your dance on:

1) Making a dance-tastic mix :  

• for Mixtresses and Mixters, I give you full permission to spend hours on the perfect transitions and crossfading techniques.  Do what you do with the boogie in mind!
• for mix-makin’ newbies, I have a few suggestions for jumping into the mix-y waters. First, go through your music library and add every song, album, or artist that makes you feel like dancin’ to a playlist.  Next, weed out any duplicates or weird R+B songs that accidentally got added when you dropped that entire Timberlake album in your mix (unless you like those grooves, in which case, groove away, baby).  Lastly, order your songs.  If you don’t wish to spend hours on transitions like we mix-nerds find endless delight in doing, I recommend ordering tracks in a dance mix from shortest to longest because typically, as songs get longer, beats get slower and serve as a good dance cool-down.  You could also just shuffle ‘em when you press play if you enjoy dance chaos, which can also be fun.
• If all of this sounds exhausting to you and you want to JUST DANCE, pop on pandora.com and base a radio station on a dancey song you like.

2) Play the Just Dance game : This is one of the most fun games ever and its available for Wii, Playstation, and Xbox, so you have no excuse not to give it a try.  The entire premise is to pick a song and dance along with the neon-avatar on the screen.

3) If you’re the dancing-extrovert-type, simply go out dancing! Gay bars are particularly supportive for this environment, but if you like booty-grinding or line-dancin’, there are several places in town for any type of rug you feel like cutting.

Above all, enjoy yourself.  Dancing is about jovial expression and good endorphins.  Let go and embrace the cheesiness and DO NOT think about how you look doing it.  Just feel the beat and DANCE!

-MixtressRae