Ladies love to dance. Even ladies who possibly shouldn’t dance, love to dance. You may meet a lady who will profess that she doesn’t dance, but deep down inside her is a disco diva just waiting to burn the house down!

Face it, guys. You’re going to have to learn how to dance.

Fortunately, there’s help. Of course, I speak of the bemani!

When it comes to dancing games, you have a few choices. There’s Dance Dance Revolution (by far the most popular, but not necessarily useful for our needs), Pump It Up (better music to actually dance to), the dreaded ParaParaParadise (which should be avoided at all costs, always. We’ll just forget that they ever made this game).

DDR sounds like it would prepare you well for any dance floor. But don’t let the “dance dance” in its name fool you. The latest versions of DDR feature songs with bpms that would better train your legs for sprint relays than booty shaking. Earlier versions of DDR had tracks that you might actually get some dancing out of. But unless you’re at the anime con rave, playing DDR is not going to help. And let’s be clear on this point. Raving is not dancing. Probably showing my age a bit here.

Pump It Up offers the widest variety of dance tracks. Sure, you tech players out there may think it’s kid stuff compared to DDR. But we’re not looking for high bpms or step counts. We’re looking for music that makes you nod your head, tap your feet, and shake that ass. From K-Pop to 80’s remixes, a few sessions of PIU even at the beginning level will, at the very least, get your body moving to a rhythm. That’s what we’re looking for. Stay away from that safety bar. The bar is a crutch. You need to learn how to balance on your own while stepping in all sorts of weird directions. You won’t have a bar at the club and hanging on to random people for balance will end your date right quick.

One of my favorite tracks is “Caution (Don’t Bother Me).” It’s got an old school hip hop beat with some pretty decent vocal work by the group Tashannie. Here’s a live version of the song. Unfortunately, I don’t think the duo is together anymore, but it’s a lot of fun. But make sure you turn up them speakers. I guarantee you’ll be nodding your head to the beat.

NOTE:  Okay, if you must go to the anime con rave, you must.  But please, please, watch for swinging glow sticks.  Them things can poke an eye out!

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:33 am and is filed under geek love, Angry Zen Master. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.