Get ready to swivel those hips! Gyrate, gig, groove, bop, boogie, skip, Pop it, Lock it and Drop it as the 29^th April is International Dance Day!

This year the gala event will be held in Havana, Cuba.   So, get yourself ready to cut a Cuban rug and try the habanera, characterised by a slow pace and if you prefer something a bit faster how about sampling and getting a swerve on the salsa!

Dance allows us to express ourselves.  It’s fun and a brilliant form of exercise and there’s enough types of dance to suit everyone! People dance for social bonding and mate-selection purposes and dance can provide confidence that spills into other areas of life.   The dance floor does strange things allowing strangers to flirt, touch, embrace, sway and sweat together? If you did any of those things in any other venue, you’d be slapped, thrown out or arrested!

Whether you fancy trying something new, make sure you make this a day to remember and celebrate with the power of the Gangnam doing your weekend dance on the leadup to get into the swing of things to come and busting a groove on the 29th!

Not everyone can strut their stuff or ghost ride the whip on the dancefloor with the confidence of the disco crazed Tony Manero from the hit movie Saturday Night Fever (especially given the nut hugging trousers!).  In reality some of us have only attended sessions at the David Brent school of dance or tend to resemble Neil Sutherland from the Inbetweeners, a sixth-former with below average intelligence, but above average dancefloor moves.  OK he knows how to do the robot, always a great routine to do at any wedding!

It is fact that at every nightclub, school dance, wedding or event where music is playing and there is a dancefloor in situ there will always be one person who looks less like they're dancing and more like they are either signalling that they are in need for the toilet or in distress or just having a bit of a turn!

That’s without even getting me started about the dreaded dad dancing often performed by more senior members of the family or the more mature male carried out normally when the said fella is in happy mode maybe brought on by a few celebratory sherbets! 

The foundations of this time old set of steps being easily recognised by the bent knees and elbows, accompanied by the surprising act of elbowing invisible children or midgets on alternate sides.  The dance also consists of the pointing of a finger in the air and the spontaneous kicking of a leg (no particular one) not in coordination with the air poking finger. These unusual moves are accompanied not by anyone else (everyone is giving them a wide berth) no, just a smile which leaves an eerie, odd and tense atmosphere on the so-called dance floor.

However, these rhythm-less minus dominant and more wild and uninhibited moves displayed normally by the wedding wallflowers or school dance shufflers could be suffering from beat deafness!  It has been found that a lack of rhythm is more than just differences in body movements, it is rooted in how people synchronise with sound.  Also, the moves you make and the shapes you throw on the dancefloor is largely to do with age, gender and genetic makeup and can reveal your personality.

Do you shyly shift from side to side? Are you dance confident with a buoyant boogie outlook always ready to get up and demonstrate your arsenal of cool routines? Do you relax and just move naturally to the rhythm? Do you hear the music, feel the music, yet can never translate it into dancing moves? Do you avoid the dance floor like vampires avoid sunlight? Does it feel like you’re flying where everything else goes away?

It’s no surprise that girls under 16 dance with the most confidence as this is an age where in the norm it’s done for fun.  They are happy to hoedown publicly either on their own or with friends.  Bopping about is something done from an early age in formal classes, so in the main its associated purely with enjoyment. 

But with age, things change which happens soon after entering the more serious teenage years!  After the 16th birthday, there is a big drop in confidence levels for girls as they are more likely to start dancing publicly in front of members of the opposite sex!  This plays a part in the sexual selection process for the first time and can contribute to a significant reduction in their dance confidence. 

From then until 35, women's confidence at strutting their funky stuff steadily increases as they move through the dating and mating and reproduction cycle.

Research shows that women find men who use medium-sized, complex movements to be the most attractive when shaking their thing.  The way a person gyrates in time to music can betray secrets of their character as extroverts move their bodies around most on the dance floor, often with energetic and exaggerated movements of their head and arms.

However, if you’re looking for an attractive and dominant man, he will be on the one doing very large, convoluted movements.  Agreeable personalities tend to have smoother dancing styles, making use of the dance floor by moving side to side while swinging their hands, whilst open-minded people tend to make rhythmic up-and-down movements not moving around as much.

And if it’s an attractive yet submissive man then go for the one doing smaller, intricate actions and footwork.

Neurotic individuals dance with sharp, jerky movements of their hands and feet a style recognised by clubbers and wedding guests as the "shuffle".

But it is a different story for boys as they increase their confidence with age each year until they hit middle age, then going flatline (welcome the dad dancing era) before rising in their confidence again at 65and beyond throwing shapes without care but loving it!

It's not just genetics that make your legs itch to hit the dancefloor as your brain has a lot to do with it!  The brain is in charge of whether you can grasp the latest dancing moves or not.  Gamma-aminobutyric acid acts like a brain's gate in charge of the passage of signals from neural cells in the brain and with everything in life if at first you don’t succeed; practice is the answer

Also people are divided into two types when it comes to brains. Right-sided and left-sided.   Left-sided people tend to be more logic, rational and go by the book. While the right-sided people are more like random, spatial and playful which sort of indicates that if you are a right sided person you are more likely to be confident and get ones groove on without feeling self-conscious.  You don’t over think things as those that do literally don't switch their brains off always thinking of something, observing listening to the voices in their heads which can ruin spontaneity wrapped up in too many questions; who's dancing? Who's staring at me? Should I smile? What the hell am I supposed to do with my hands?

Are my hips move weirdly?  It goes on and on and on which cause more awkward movements.

Dancing is about letting go. Feeling the music taking over your body and it won’t happen unless you lose control and allow the music to work its magic.   Dancing and movement conveys subtle messages about the way we feel and think.

So lets crunk, dance up on, head-bang, mosh and skank your thing!