If there may be something that has marked youth tradition, not less than from the twentieth century ahead, it has been dancing.
Within the Twenties, it was the Charleston. In the course of the Nineteen Thirties and Forties, it was Swing and the Jitterbug. With the daybreak of the rock ’n roll period, you had the Twist and the Mashed Potato. How are you going to point out the Seventies and never point out Disco? Quick ahead into the Nineteen Eighties and also you had the Electrical Slide and Breakdancing. Enter the Nineteen Nineties and also you had hip-hop strikes just like the Hammer dance. Okay, as a courtesy to our collective embarrassment, I received’t point out the Macarena. Oops, sorry, I suppose I simply did. The 2000s gave us the Cha-Cha Slide. The 2010s launched dancing Gangnam Model, together with the Harlem Shake and Twerking.
And sure, whereas the 2020s has seen TikTok usher in any variety of novel dance strikes, from Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” to Doja Cat’s “Say So,” folks have stopped doing one thing that different eras naturally did.
Which is becoming a member of in on the dance.
The Wall Avenue Journal (WSJ) notes that immediately, all of a sudden everyone seems to be scared to bop at live shows and golf equipment. They’re nervous about trying goofy on digital camera. Translation: video might have killed the radio star, however social media is killing dancing. The article notes that “dance like no one’s watching” might have been sound recommendation in bygone eras, however not in a world the place everybody has a digital camera of their pocket. They notice the brand new rule: “Dance like anyone could possibly be watching and that footage will observe you eternally.”
No person desires to be the subsequent meme.
Dance now resides within the realm of short-form video, which means “slick choreographed routines” that “proliferate on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, spawning mimics and viral developments.” However at live shows? It’s all of a sudden time to face nonetheless.
WSJ famous that Tyler, the Creator, the rapper who has launched 4 straight No. 1 albums, lamented in July that the specter of fixed surveillance was killing dance for his technology:
“I requested some buddies why they don’t dance in public and a few stated due to the concern of being filmed,” he wrote on Instagram. “I assumed rattling, a pure type of expression and a sure connection they’ve with music is now a ghost.”
I couldn’t assist however take this a cultural step or two and apply it to how youthful folks now appear intent on residing their lives. They’re scared to bop. Which means they’re scared to be outliers in a world the place acceptance is every thing and conformity is the pathway to that acceptance.
There was once worth within the thought of “marching to the beat of a special drum,” which means the braveness to suppose, stay and observe your personal ideas as a substitute of bowing to the group of social expectations. The phrase comes from Thoreau, who wrote in Walden: “If a person doesn’t preserve tempo along with his companions, maybe it’s as a result of he hears a special drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears….”
For Christ followers of all ages, that is wanted now greater than ever. It’s known as being salt and light-weight in a deeply fallen world.
So I go away you with the lyrics to a different track—sure, a bit dated, however maybe now prescient in its message:
I hope you continue to really feel small if you stand beside the ocean
At any time when one door closes, I hope yet one more opens
Promise me that you’re going to give religion a combating likelihood
And if you get the selection to sit down it out or dance
I hope you dance.
James Emery White
Sources
Elias Leight, “Abruptly Everybody Is Scared to Dance at Live shows and Golf equipment,” The Wall Avenue Journal, December 31, 2025, learn on-line.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
“I Hope You Dance,” songwriters Mark Daniel Sanders and Tia M. Sillers, as recorded and carried out by Lee Ann Womack.
