The dance and the sex

There’s dancing, and then there’s . . . dancing. There’s “gliding, stepping or moving through a set series of movements, usually to music,” according to the Merriam- Webster’s Desk Dictionary, and then there’s “an overtly sexual form of dance performed in clubs and at high school dances,” according to urbandictionary.com. Since Webster has been at this dictionary thing a bit longer than the posters on a Web site, I’m venturing to guess that dancing wasn’t always the (often awkward) bump and grind of drunk people when “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas comes on. But the relationship of sex and dancing can’t be denied, and it seems that, as a culture becomes more accepting of sex in the mainstream, dancing becomes dirtier. Let’s look back on the ages at the dances of history and determine which era had the hottest sex based on their dances:

 

320 B.C.

Alexander the Great and his troops storm Babylon and feast their battle-weary eyes on some luscious dancers upon their arrival, both male and female. Clad to cover their naughty bits and not much else, the dancers used their hips, butts and come-hither looks to impress their audience. Very hot.

 

481 A.D.

Although the maypole dance stemmed from a pagan ceremony of fertility, those who created it seemed to ignore the erotic point of the dance. Perfomers circle slowly around (get excited-) a pole with ribbons attached to it. Everyone wears clothes and it’s unlikely that anyone got hot and bothered by watching or participating. Less than hot.

 

1812 A.D.

Any swoony English major with time to kill has seen the British miniseries based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and bemoaned the fact that even Colin Firth couldn’t heat up the dancing of that era. While the ornate dresses often involved eye catching cleavage and the pants were just tight enough to see the subtle outline of a package, the dances involved only the most chaste physical contact and impressive but unsexy patterns of movement by couples across the floor. Perhaps titillating for the Bennett sisters, but pretty frigid by today’s standards.

 

1942

With a bloody war raging in Europe and the South Pacific, kids in the U.S. blow off steam by swing dancing, an acrobatic dance to big band music where fellas throw their girls around and get all jazzy with themselves. As several of the throwing moves involved direct pelvic contact and the girls wore cute dresses where the undies underneath often made a flip appearance, this dancing earns a relatively sexy rating.

 

Present day

Like all of the above eras, the dancing of today has a fun name: freaking. By no coincidence, “freak” is also the most common replacement for a much dirtier word to describe sex, and that’s what freaking is: a replacement for sex that the participants would openly engage in if common decency (and bouncers) were to allow it. The downside to freaking is that only people with natural rhythm can do it, which pretty much leaves out every white guy I know.

The downside for girls, of course, is that you have some random guy gyrating on you from behind without even buying you a drink first. What may have once been hot just looks bad most of the time, which demotes it to a tepid water rating.

And the winner is- Alexander and his risque booty shakers. So the next time the urge to freak strikes you, just go rent the damn DVD and enjoy the goods with Colin Farrell.