howto: Dance

Yes, you read that correctly. The time has come for all those sad saps flailing their limbs like an electrified
starfish to cease, and actually learn for the first time in their sorry lives what it means to break it down and jive and get funky with it, and all that good stuff. For too long has the madness gone on! It must end, here and now! So here and now, I, the Strickin's Resident Dancemaster and Choreographer, will teach, nay, enlighten you about the finer points of motor skills, what it really means to dance, and the ever-important aspect of not falling on your ass. (Unless you learn how to do it really skillfully and add it as part of your dance routine, but that's a different story.)

As some of you might know, I have a reputation as one of the craziest dancers around. From Miami to Ibiza, my name is on the spinny-disc-thingies of every DJ who knows his shit. If you go to a dance party and they don't know who I am, federal law requires you to storm out of there in disgust and never talk to those people again. When I groove down a street – walking is for wussies and bald people – my escort of secret Russian ninja ballerinas (you'd never guess how many knives can fit under a tutu) has been given international jurisdiction to shank and/or dismember anyone who thinks it would be a good idea (it wouldn't be) to question my dancing. I freakin' invented dubstep. Every breath I take, every move I make, is always an extension of the dance-y-ness that flows through my veins. But how did I get like this? Where did I learn these mad skillz? Was it from Tibetan dancing monks? The Jets from West Side Story? Tibetan dancing monkeys?

Monkey dance break.

Let me tell you a little secret: it was none of those. I taught myself. From a young age, I was always very mobile, able to walk and eventually run by age four and a half-ish. One day, I was walking around, as I used to normally do, when I heard something in the distance... a booming bass, a trilling treble... then I saw it, covered in blinking neon lights: a strip club (That, Neil Patrick Harris, is how I met your mother!).

BOOM

Unfortunately, the bouncer refused to let me in on the grounds that I would "weird everyone out, yo." He could stop me from going in, but he couldn't stop me from dancing. So, right there in the street outside the strip club, I danced. And when the cops came, I kept on dancin', and when child services was questioning my parents, I was still dancin', and even when I fell asleep that night and dreamed, it was of dancin'. I didn't stop, and never have since then. Five days later, on my seventh birthday, I won So You Think You Can Dance? with just my audition. That's what it all boils down to: dancing until you don't think you can dance no more, and then keep on dancing. Also, walking and stuff. Then it's on to the mental game.
You have to be able to feel the dance, that je ne sais quoi of the rhythm, the porte cochère of energy, the hors d'œuvre of lights and sounds all around you. Embrace it, like a serial killler embraces his favorite machete. If you cannot, then, just like a serial killer, you will not be able to perform your task correctly, and your life may come crashing down around your ears before you can say "That's not my machete!" However. If and when you do learn how to do it correctly? It is a thing of beauty. All the cogs mesh, the party becomes infinitely better, angels sing... I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Lo and behold, before their eyes appeared a rockin' party like none before.

Here's a biggie: you have to stay on your feet. Always. Whatever you do, do not fall on your ass, especially if you're in public (which if you're dancing, you should be; otherwise what's the point?). Because if you do fall, and an attractive woman sees you on the ground, it's quite likely that she will laugh at you and also not offer to make out with you but instead do it with your friend even though she CLEARLY had the hots for you from the start. Not that I know personally or anything. But if I did know, I'm sure it would ruin your night. Possibly a few more nights after that too that you waste on crying in your bedroom. Maybe. So stay on the safe side and stay vertically slanted.
In review, the three steps to becoming an awesome dancer like me except not as awesome: learn motor skills; understand the essence of dance; and, most importantly, don't fall. I know that you, you, and definitely you in the backwards hat, just don't know what I'm talking about. But that's okay. As a famous man once more or less said, I have a dream that one day you will be reading this – preferably soon – and like a bunch of random baking ingredients of knowledge, it will all come together for you and make a chocolate cake of wisdom, and you will cut that chocolate cake into pieces of epiphany and share it with your friends, and no none of that was a drug reference, and you will all simultaneously realize that the answer to life is to (as a semi-famous person once actually said) Just Dance. 'Cuz Ben Hornung knows what he's talking about.
Truth.