teen male, likes to dance, but people say i can't, help!

[Estena]

I'm a 16 year old male that loves too dance but people say i can't. Can anyone help?

[Twilight_Elena]

I'm a 16 year old male that loves too dance but people say i can't. Can anyone help?

Of course, Estena! Welcome to DF, hope we get to see you around! :D
I'm a 17 year old teen girl, and I know how easily people can say "he's hopeless", "he can't dance", etc. I think that's very wrong. EVERYONE can dance. It doesn't matter if you're tall or short, if you're overweight or skinny, if you're male or female. It really doesn't. Dancing is about the soul of it. If you feel connected to the music, you'll be more confident, and confidence makes an amazing difference to the appearance.
I would suggest you start taking some dance lessons. I know your friends might not like it, but they don't really have to know unless you tell them, if you think they'll make fun of you. Unfortunately, most young people think dancing is for losers/gays and other completely moronic stuff. Since you're 16, I am assuming you don't have any dance background (jazz, ballroom, etc.) so I'd suggest you start off with ballroom or jazz, since they will offer you basic technique knowledge of balance, footwork, etc. A very good starting dance is salsa, as it's more freestyle and closer to what you might have danced to up till now.
Being smooth and stylish can be achieved in two ways: being a natural or practicing a LOT. Either way, you're going to need some dance lessons. You could start looking up your local dance studios and going to their first-lesson-free's.
Good luck!

Twilight Elena

[ReneeJoan]

Dear Estena:

Of course you can dance!! It doesn't matter how unskilled your are today, or how untalented you might feel you are, if you have the desire, if you here the Voice of the Muse calling to you, you can dance.

And here's the wonderful part -- if you are willing to discipline yourself and work hard, even if you think you have no talent, here's a huge secret -- you can CREATE talent. When I first started dancing I didn't think I had any talent. In fact, I KNEW I didn't. I'd never been good at any physical activity of any kind. But I wanted to learn to dance tango so much that I didn't care how hard I had to work, or how long it took, I was determined to learn this beautiful art form.

The amazing this is, that as I grew in skill, I also grew in talent. I'd always thought that talent was something you were born with -- a divine gift -- you either had it or you didn't. But my teacher told me that I can CREATE talent. Still hard to get my head around such a revolutionary concept, but it must be true, because I was telling one of my friends a couple months ago that I really didn't have talent, just that I was willing to work hard. She flat out didn't believe me. She said, "Renee, if you think you don't have talent, then you're the only one who thinks so."

As Twilight Elena recommended above, a foundational class in classical dance will help you immeasurably. I'd recommend ballet to train you in the basic fundamentals of dance, but if that is not possible, then I'd recommend a good martial arts class -- Indonesian Silat, Tae Kwan Do, Aikido, Karate, Kung Fu, Tai Chi. This kind of training wilil help you learn to control your body, focus your "chi" and strengthen your center or "core," all of which will enhance your dancing and help train and discipline your body.

Renee

[Estena]

thanks for the advice i'll look into goining to dance lessons/classes

[DWise1]

As Twilight Elena recommended above, a foundational class in classical dance will help you immeasurably. I'd recommend ballet to train you in the basic fundamentals of dance, but if that is not possible, then I'd recommend a good martial arts class -- Indonesian Silat, Tae Kwan Do, Aikido, Karate, Kung Fu, Tai Chi. This kind of training wilil help you learn to control your body, focus your "chi" and strengthen your center or "core," all of which will enhance your dancing and help train and discipline your body.

If you follow the martial arts path, I would recommend Aikido, especially if you should ever move on to partner dancing (which I'm sure you will if you stay in dancing). At least in the form that I had studied (in which the emphasis was on Ki training (somewhat the same as "chi" and is even written the same in Chinese characters)) we learned to lead our opponents by blending with their motion instead of trying to muscle them -- indeed, whenever we tried to muscle our way through a technique, it would fail.

25 years after my last Aikido class, I had my first dance class: intermediate salsa. For leading, moving, and turning, I applied the only thing that I knew which was Aikido (adapting general principles, not actual techniques). From that very first class on, I have received many compliments on my strong and smooth lead and have often seen my partners smile with relief that they were finally with somebody who wouldn't literally jerk them around and hurt them. It turns out -- and I didn't know this at first -- that most guys start out thinking that they have to muscle the girl through the moves, yanking on their arm and cranking it around. That kind of treatment is not only unpleasant, but it also leads to shoulder injuries, which I believe is the most common form of dance injury. It can take a long time for a guy to learn that that is not how you lead your partner. It would really help if guys were to come into partner dance with an awareness of a far better way to lead, such as I had learned through Aikido.

And while I personally do not have a high opinion of my own ability to dance, most of my partners disagree with my low opinion of myself. And I believe that their opinion of my dancing is largely due to how I lead them, which I owe to what I had learned in Aikido.