There is a relatively well known book called [The 5 Love Languages]. It’s a relationships book about how people feel and express their love for other people. The basic idea is that people in relationships may be expressing their love for their partner in a way that the partner doesn’t like to receive.

Recently, The Dancing Grapevine posted an article called The Love Languages of Dance. The author makes an excellent analogy between relationships and dances, which sometimes feel like mini relationships anyhow.

In the same way that the love languages are: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time and Physical Touch, the love languages of dance are: Energy, Playfulness, Deep Connection, Challenge, Expression and Creativity.

For the longest time, it’s really puzzled me why certain people like dancing with other people. There are many people who I can recognize as objectively good who I just don’t like dancing with. There are many people who are objectively good who don’t like dancing with me.

I am definitely a connection / musicality person; I’m probably most at home doing micro-fusion, but for practical reasons West Coast Swing is my main dance these days. I really like connection a lot and like to do interesting things with it and to test its limits. That also means that I don’t usually do much silly stuff, or big lifts and dips.

The love languages of dance list is probably not complete, but the underlying message is a great one: it’s worth trying to understand what the other person wants from a dance. It might even be worth it to try to give them what they want, even if it’s not directly apprealing to you.