Banning freak dancing

[larryt]

Article in the Seattle PI

Nov. 19, 2005

This week's Burning Question

Should schools ban freak dancing?

"From the Ball Room to Hell" is the cautionary tale of a dance instructor led into sin by his terpsichorean endeavors. The author, T.A. Faulkner, posits the notion that the dance floor is the devil's playground.

My mother came across the book in a box of family memorabilia. It was published in 1894 when, by today's standards, dancing was a rather chaste activity. If waltzing was an invitation to wanton lust, imagine what that 19th-century author would have to say about the tango, swing dancing, the Watusi, the Bump or good old gatoring.

When I was in junior high, my girlfriend's devout parents would not allow her to attend school dances. That didn't prevent me from going. I remember school counselors stepping in to keep a few inches of air between us 14-year-olds as hormones raced around the gymnasium like atoms ready to explode. In high school, the rules were more relaxed and boys and girls shuffled in an aroused, sweaty clinch when the slow songs came on.

When I found myself chaperoning my own children's school dances, I observed that things had been notched up quite a few points on the sex-o-meter. Freak dancing had arrived.

If you've never heard of the freak, picture this: A girl bends forward thrusting her derriere against the crotch of a young man as both grind their hips in time to the music. It's sort of like a lap dance, except everyone's clothes stay on.

Freak dancing certainly has its allure, although I haven't been able to persuade any female remotely in my own age group to give it a try. It's not religiosity that holds them back, it's a sense of decorum. But today's teenagers have grown up in an R-rated world where decorum does not exist and sexuality is on public display. When they do the freak, it is a provocative tease, but few seem to take it so seriously that they try to go from a vertical expression to a horizontal act.

Nevertheless, just as lap dances have now been banned in Seattle's strip clubs, administrators in Seattle Public Schools want to ban freak dancing. It's too sexually explicit, they say, and it embarrasses other students.

Is this a sensible place to draw a line? Is it long past time for adults to resist an amoral popular culture's bad influence on children? Or is this yet another silly example of old prudes trying to spoil kids' harmless fun? Here's my Burning Question:

Should schools ban freak dancing?

The reference to the book from 1894 caught my eye. If the church is so healthy why are we not making more of an impact on the world around us.

What will it take to make an impact?

LT

[MK202002]

yeah- sounds like a good idea.

[Bolts]

yeah- sounds like a good idea.

Ditto

[Mikeyjay]

i found this at: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/zeiger/040424

The contemporary lexicon of dirty dancing includes such terms as freaking, slamming, moshing, spanking, humping, bumping, undressing, grinding, and so on. Dancing fascinates cultural anthropologists because it seems that dancing is an almost universal expression of love without actually lovemaking. But for American high school and college students in 2004, dancing has become nothing short of group sex.

A few weeks ago, according to the Associated Press, officials at Oregon's Bend High School shut down a school dance after the bumping and grinding (intense sexual hip rubbing) got so out of hand that one teacher described it as "sex with your clothes on."

But, says one 17-year old Bend High School student, "it's just the way people dance these days." Many students at the Oregon school plan to protest this year's upcoming prom by throwing an expensive alternative party, devoid of chaperones, rules, and appropriate clothing.

After similarly lascivious dancing at Shawnee Mission North High School in Kansas City, a controversial dance behavior expectation policy has been drafted by administrators. One senior quoted in the Kansas City Star called the proposed rule "a joke ... We're moving with the generation," she said, "This is what we've seen."

Even Christian schools and Catholic schools have dance problems. One music DJ reports on the website of the United States Disc Jockey Association that upon being handed a song play list at a Catholic School dance, "At first I thought it was the do not play list." If X-rated popular music is intended to spark its listeners to X-rated action, it certainly gets results.

When I was a sophomore at Puyallup High School near Seattle, parental concerns over excessive freak dancing led to new rules for the 2001 Valentine's Day Ball. Students and administrators worked together to formulate a reasonable compromise that included things like no simulated sex acts, no ankle grabbing, and no lewd groping. But renegade students, determined to repudiate the new rules, organized a competing no-rules dance at the Liberty Theater down the street from the high school.

At the time, I was Class President, and I organized a meeting at which I addressed my class of 500 on the importance of public modesty and school spirit. My exhortations went unheeded by the several hundred students who ended up at the anarchic orgy down the street.

The notorious breast-revealing song and dance routine performed by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at this year's Super Bowl is hardly a shocker for this generation. Popular culture, managed in large part by the marketing gurus of MTV, has found its way onto the dance floor of Generation Y. Chances are, your local educational institution has hosted a recent dance with a flock of J.Lo's and Britney Spearses doing the freak with a testosterone charged legion of Eminems and P. Diddy's. It is to be expected in a day when the flesh almost always triumphs over the spirit. Having seen it all, Generation Y is more than ready to do it all.

They've done it all in Fort Wayne, Indiana, according to an article in last week's Fort Wayne News Sentinel. School officials are making what effort they can to put an end to perverse gyrations, skimpy clothing, and inappropriate lyrics in dance songs.

Dirty dancing is the only kind of dancing there is, declare the louder voices of my generation. "I've grown up with it," says one girl at Northrop High School in Fort Wayne. "That's the way dance is. You have to grow with times."

In California, Palo Alto High School principal Sandra Pearson refuses to "grow with times." Pearson banned freak dancing at her high school last year because she said it "is like pornography ... there are instances when a girl will be on the floor and there will be guys on top of her,'' gyrating in sync to the song. The San Jose Mercury News adds to Pearson's description: "There are times when a student's head is nuzzled in another's crotch. Or legs are hung around hips as pelvises thrust against each other. Basically, it's anything that looks like sex."

Even the rebellious Baby Boomers were quite puritanical in their dance styles, I'm told, in contrast to this generation. Generation Y is bumping and grinding its way to the gates of perdition. The promiscuity, the abortions, the broken hearts, the empty minds, the annihilated souls are proof of a generation that is literally "freaking" out.

...yes i think it shoud be banned !!!

[larryt]

Hi all,

My point was not that this type of dancing should be banned (it should be), but that the church has had little effect on the culture. I see the church becoming more and more permissive. In the 50's and 60's pastors said rock and roll would lead to more immorality, and it has. Now "christian moshing" is accepted as legitimate. 20 yrs down the road and "christian freak dancing" will be part of the church service if it isn't already. Those that demand christian liberty are most often those that know little of holiness.

The reference to the book from 1894 caught my eye. If the church is so healthy why are we not making more of an impact on the world around us.

What will it take to make an impact?

LT