dancing at weddings

unpacking my silliest superpower

(before i begin: i started a pop culture nostalgia podcast with two friends called this still hits. our first episode is live, and the second is dropping tuesday. let me know what you think!)

looking back, i should have known that i was destined to be a professional wedding dancer — meaning, a person who dances at weddings full time, which is sadly not a job that actually exists — in high school. at my junior prom, i got devastatingly down to justin timberlake’s “rock your body” and spontaneously performed “thriller” with a few members of my dance team. the following monday, my friend stephanie approached me, clearly bothered about something. “hey, steph! is everything okay?” i asked, confused. her face twisted. “my date was asking about you after prom on saturday,” she huffed. “he asked me where you learned to dance like that.”

at my senior prom, the phenomenon strangely repeated. upon our arrival to the sheraton tara, a moderately-priced southern new hampshire hotel that was inexplicably created to look like a bavarian castle, my (now-very-gay) date immediately abandoned me to work the room in a bid to be named prom king. it worked, at least. i, unfazed, made a bee-line to the dance floor to do what i did best: shake my groove thing to usher and lil’ jon until the cows came home — which was a reasonable 10pm.

i was innocently eating my tuna salad sandwich with my friends in our regular nook at lunchtime on monday when my friend lyndsey turned to me, a bit more detached and amused than steph had been. “kim…it was so weird. dan would not shut up about your moves at prom. he kept talking about how much fun he had because of… your dancing.”

it was then that the dots began to connect. i loved to dance, and had taken lessons since age four. but while i had a decent sense of rhythm and could learn choreography well enough, i was not an amazing dancer by any stretch. to be clear, i wasn’t an elaine benes, either — i slotted somewhere right in the middle.

once i moved fully into my wedding guest era in my mid-to-late 20s, the picture became even clearer, as i noticed that same prom experience happening in a slightly different way after i tore up the reception to usher’s “omg” and the b-52s’ “love shack.” i’ve never been the type of woman who men flock to in public or approach at random; if you have been, a sincere congratulations (and please tell me all of your secrets). if you also haven’t been, you can probably relate to witnessing this among friends or acquaintances and thinking, “how do they do it?” but i slowly realized that it seemed as if my dancing — or, not so much my dancing as my complete abandon and surrender to joy in the moment, as channeled through a well-placed hip shake or pop-lock, temporarily unlocked this superpower within me.

by day, i was as unassuming as clark kent — a friendly but not overly extroverted writer. by weekend night in the spring and summer, i was unabashed, a free spirit riding spontaneously on the breeze of the next beat. and almost every single time (though the flowing booze and convivial nature of the wedding dance floor probably helped) a man i did not know came up to me and struck up a conversation or asked me to dance.

why, i wondered, can’t this behavior seem to breach the perimeter of the country club or function hall? should i start spontaneously busting moves in the grocery store aisle or at the bus stop? that seemed a touch unhinged, but the underlying question remained: was there something in the wedding reception version of me that i could translate into my everyday energy?

the wedding reception, i realized, was one of the few places where everyone — not just me — is permitted and encouraged to let their guards down. the bar is open. the seating is unpredictable. dancing isn’t just possible, but it’s expected. you’re potentially rubbing elbows with and shaking your booty alongside your greatest friends… and your friend’s great aunt sally.

but i also realized something else: the version of me that exists on the dance floor isn’t a different person, or even an alter ego. it’s who i naturally am when the music lights me up and i’m not concerned with who’s watching.

of course, there are other environments that lend themselves to this temporary “transformation:” vacations, halloween, concerts, even a bar i’ve never been to before. but i haven’t found any as powerful as the specific combination of vows, vodka, and good vibrations.

so until i figure out a way to bring that energy more consistently into my everyday life — with or without a partner who embodies the energy of the man i saw mime a flute solo during rusted root’s “send me on my way” at a reception in 2019 — i’ll be anxiously awaiting my next save-the-date.

see y’all on the floor.