This video clip wins the award for Greatest Tap-Dancing-in-Traditional-Japanese-Dress Clip Ever.

Watching this clip, I was like, Wow, this has Rhetorics of Rhythm all over it. Most of the discussion on the wiki seems to center around the notion of music as the primary trope of rhythm. Little has been said, or if it has I've missed it (probably the more likely option), about music's baby, dance. Perhaps that's because everyone likes music - and I mean everyone, as I have yet to meet a single person who didn't like some form of music or another - but not so many like to dance.

I love to dance. I can't hear a good beat without tapping my toe or shaking my ass. One of the best things about my trip to Miami Beach is that I spent a large fraction of my time gettin' down with my bad self. I like to get down to house, I like to rock it to drums'n bass and I like to shake it to hip-hop.

I didn't always like to dance. In fact I used to hate it. I was so uncoordinated, all knobby elbows and knees and huge, boatlike feet. I had more body than I had any clue what to do with, and I was forever banging body parts into furniture. I still remember vividly being thirteen years old, watching the Utah Jazz on TV with my family in our basement. When the Jazz won, I leapt into the air, only to be mercilessly smacked down by the ceiling.

I suppose that is what happens when you shoot up an entire foot in height over the course of junior high. Everything shrinks.

So I was very uncoordinated, like a baby giraffe. It was only after I entered high school and found sports coaches salivating over me like starving coyotes over a rancid piece of goat carcass that I started to have any sort of awareness of my body. Of course, it was a really arduous process, filled with nightmares (a messed up knee, machines that tore my calf muscles so I could have an extra inch or two in my vertical) and embarrassments (like the time I shot at my own basket repeatedly, for friends and family to see - they still give me a hard time about it all these years later), but eventually I became somewhat of an athlete.

Now, I'm not exactly a good dancer, just like I'm not a particularly good athlete. I've never seen myself dance before but I'm sure I must look a spastic mess. Like, I bet I make Elaine Benes look like Martha f'in Graham. However, as I am not trying out for any dance troupes or WNBA teams, that doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that I love to dance, and that I don't really care how I look when I do it, because I love it that damn much.

More people should dance. Dancing - like laughter and sex - are expressions of joy and ecstasy. They tap into our inner sense of rhythm and our need to just cut loose. They feel good. They're fun. If more people laughed and danced and had really great sex, the world would be such a bomb-ass place, wouldn't it?

I have a few ideas about what dancing is not, though. Dancing is not slamming into each other's sweaty, shirtless bodies as hard as possible. I say this even though I adore Fugazi and love to bang my head on the punk rock, but slamdancing is not dancing. Aggressive display of pent-up homoerotic frustrations, yes, but dancing - no.

Dancing is also not grinding like a stripper. You cannot slowly rotate your hips in a circle and rub yourself and call that dancing. Masturbation, sure. Making a living, okay. Dancing? Eh. It might look hot but let's not kid ourselves - it ain't dancing.

Finally, I don't count cooler-than-thou head-nodding as dancing. It's like you are trying to cop the good vibes of a dancefest without actually expending the energy or cutting loose. It doesn't work like that. Who ever expressed their inner joy by nodding their head? No one, because the only thing you get out of nodding your head for an hour straight is a sore neck.

Sadly, it seems like the majority of the people I encounter fall into one of the top three categories. Sorry, white boys, but you guys are the worst offenders of all. I know you guys are supposed to be all cool and emotionless and that you are supposed to spend your time checking out the ladies (or the men, if you swing that way), but how much fun is that? Not much fun at all.

Is it because of self-consciousness? Is it because we feel like everyone is looking at us? That they are all staring at us agape and thinking to themselves, "My God, did the short bus crash outside or what?" Probably. But I realized a long time ago that people are going to look, and that there's nothing you can really do about it. I tend to stick out, what with being ginormous and all, and so if I went into hiding every time anyone looked at me I might as well go live in a cave somewhere and eat locusts or something.

In summary, dancing is fun, even though I suck at it. More people should do it, even though they would probably suck at it, too.

Rock on.