My family does not, as a general rule, dance. Maybe individually. Very rarely together. It takes a wedding or bar mitzvah or other major state occasion to get even some of us on the dance floor. When left to our own devices, it doesn’t happen spontaneously. At least not until last Thanksgiving, when we tried out Dance Dance Revolution.
Every Thanksgiving, or every other, the whole mishpokeh gathers at my mom and stepdad’s place in Vermont. We have a good time eating and hanging out, watching football on TV and taking walks on the dirt roads. In the past couple of years we’ve started reintroduced video games into the mix. Katamari Damachy was a hit with some of my younger cousins. But Dance Dance Revolution turned out to be the really big smash. It was my sister’s then-boyfriend, now-fiance who had the idea, and he deserves mad props for thinking of it. The whole clan got involved, from the toddlers up to the seniors.
Serious competition in DDR takes coordination and some athleticism, but if you just want to play for fun, just about anybody can give it a spin and enjoy doing it.
It bums me out that there are so many families like mine who deprive themselves of the essential social vitamins of group singing and dancing. If DDR can get us out of our shells, I say bring on the DDR.