Do drummers make good dancers?

diosdude

Silver Member
Okay, i'm not a social dancer 'cause i'm , well, FAT, not P-H-A-T, I'm F-A-T and i get all sweaty after a while on the dance floor. I have had numerous ladies say laughable comments to me like "wow, you're such a great dancer!!". I kinda just thought to myself, "eh... she's just being nice i don't know how to flippin' dance". But then i realized after hanging out in some clubs that there are guys that have NO coordination whatsoever in their bodies. That's why i think good drummers make good dancers. We already have innate timing built into bodily control, dancing just adds a couple other parts that we don't really utilize all that often. The rotating and gyrating parts that we don't use drumming are our hips/ flexors, rotating our shoulders and rotating our torsos. If you can do all those in time and learn some basic "steps", where and when to put your feet, you've got the basic recipe to be a good dancer. The bad, "epic fail on the dance floor" that i see constantly is usually from clumsy (or drunk, or both) dudes that have NO timing and NO independence. In a nutshell, good dancing comes from good TIMING and great dancing comes from great timing and independence from your hips, shoulders, elbows and lastly foot placement. Since drummers in general have great coordination with 4 limbs, they naturally also have coordination with "core" muscles.

Just an observation after watching some Steve Gadd and Marco Minnemann vids. I've noticed when those 2 guys start "getting down" on the kit they appear to be channeling some kind of mojo between their hips and shoulders that give them inhuman groove. Almost as if they're doing a samba in their seat while playing. I tried it myself, just doing a litlle bounce move from the hip while rotating the shoulders and surprisingly, while keeping time with my hips/ shoulders/ head-bob it tied in everything i was doing on the kit and made it feel natural, instead of just staying rigid and thinking about where my next fill was coming from and what sticking technique was i going to pull out of my bag of tricks.
 
I was looking up info on this fabulous drummer on Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_C._Coleman

and Wikipedia sez "He loved to dance and was known for his laughter and sharp dressing." I can just imagine him on the dance floor! :)

I would hope drummers could dance well, but apparently not all can. I think I remember some music special on the telly saying that Alex Van Halen was hard to choreograph during the shoot for Hot for Teacher...but I cannot find anything on google verifying that...
 
I can keep time, but lack the elegance to dance properly. Elegance in dancing is not something you would learn from drumming.

Which reminds me: my ex-girlfriend thought it was impossible to dance to a rhythm. Dancing, according to her, is something you do to a melody.
Thank god we broke up...
 
I can keep time, but lack the elegance to dance properly...

Same here... I can also keep time with my arms, legs, hips, neck, whatever, when I'm on the dancefloor... But that doesn't mean there's any elegance present in my dancing at all... :) I look like a timber trying to stay up in strong winds... Elegant as a Pocahontas with hormone disorder... Matter of fact - all I can do is solo-dancing... Otherwise women I dance with either suffer or get hurt... :)
 
No, apparently they can't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0XLKcMoXRE. About 2.10 to 2.30 is what you're looking for.

LOL - he's a better dancer than I am. I'm more elephants than elegance, alas.

I was always the one making people dance rather than doing the dancing myself so I never had the chance to work out any moves. The only one I ever remember is The Snorkel, but that's over 40 years out of date ...
 
I loved to dance. Went to every dance in school, even some I wasn't suppose to. CYO dances also. Took social dance in college, Foxtrot, Walze, Jitterbug, Squaredance (yuk). Whether I was better than others because I was a drummer, don't know, but always had the rhythm.
 
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I was always the one making people dance rather than doing the dancing myself so I never had the chance to work out any moves.

This is my excuse to my gf whenever she wants to cut a rug... I do try and do a "seat dance" if the crowd is getting me into it, but in real life, I prefer slow dancing.
 
We're also good at massage. When I did a Swedish massage course back in the Paleozoic Era the instructor chose me out of the class to demonstrate how tapotements should be done. Tapotements are the drumming aspect of massage - cupping, chopping and pounding.

I've performed many drum solos on friends' backs. It's one time when drum solos are sure to be appreciated. Metal players may need to tone things down, though - unless their subject is exceptionally large and robust (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
 
We're also good at massage.
Oh yes!! I get that too. Not just a sense of rhythm, but dynamic control is so useful when doing a back, neck, calf solo. It's one side skill that's certainly a better paying gig than drumming on a kit will ever be! (ahem)

As for dancing, ahahahahahaaaaa. Sorry, I can't type much for laughing at mental history images of me attempting to dance as some pathetic attempt to pull chicks. Why oh why oh why did I do that when all I needed to to was lick my eyebrows.
 
Well... I´ve seen Jojo Mayer dance samba, and he seemed pretty good at it(in his dvd). For me, I always seat myself in the corner with a brewski and watch others make a fool of themselves.
 
Not in my case. Even if I feel the groove, I can only maintain dancing OK for like 30 seconds. After that I start to self destruct, and end up dancing like Elaine Benis in that one Seinfeld episode.
 
I think it would be fair to say that the answer to the question: "Do drummers make good dancers?" is a resounding NO :) So far it seems only diosdude, Gerri Atrique and Guntersdad can dance and the rest of us are tanglefoots (tanglefeet?).

A sense of rhythm is one thing, grace is another thing entirely. Ive tossed up going to dance classes for years now but embarrassment at my dorkiness keeps me from doing it.

Does dancing have rudiments you can practice? lol
 
i heard some famous drummer say " don't trust a drummer who can't dance"....forget who though
 
yes, and i love to dance. good thing the ladies love too aswell huh. :)
 
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