Friday 11 July 2014

John Travolta-style dancing is the way to a woman's heart

His dancing style has inspired cringeworthy moments at weddings and nightclubs, but it seems John Travolta knew what he was doing when he strutted his stuff in Saturday Night Fever.

The Hollywood actor's flamboyant dance moves from the cult disco film are of the kind that is the most attractive to women, new research by scientists has revealed.

Researchers studied the freestyle dancing techniques commonly deployed by hapless men in nightclubs, to determine which were most likely to impress female onlookers.

Among their findings they concluded that exaggerated "dad" dancing, as demonstrated by David Brent in the television comedy series The Office, was the least attractive.

Another style unlikely to win a woman's heart was "the shuffle", where self-conscious males shift from foot to foot accompanied with the occasional uncomfortable hand-wring.

Highly-co-ordinated and complex dance moves, such as the point-and-shake moves employed by Travolta's character Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever, were deemed the most attractive.

Dr Peter Lovatt, a psychologist of performance at Hertfordshire University, explained that dancing in nightclubs was the modern human equivalent of courtship displays used by birds and other animals.

"It is all about how we communicate through dance," he said. "There is an evolutionary reason why we dance in a particular way – as Darwin suggested, dancing is a bit like a courtship ritual to catch the eye of a high-quality member of the opposite sex.

"I wanted to examine which features of the dances we see in nightclubs make men seem more masculine, dominant or attractive."

Dr Lovatt, who was a professional dancer before he went into academia, filmed 15 short video clips of himself performing different dance moves and blurred out his physical features so that only his movements were visible.

He showed the videos to 55 women and asked them to rate how masculine, dominant and attractive each dance move was. He found that timid dancers who shuffle from foot to foot in small movements were deemed to rate lowest for all three characteristics, while large, unco-ordinated movements were also deemed unattractive but were thought to be most dominant.

Highly-co-ordinated, complex movements that were of medium size were found to be the most attractive.

Dr Lovatt said he hoped his work would provide some tips for those who struggle on the dance floor, whether they are teenagers or older dancers.

He said: "Increasingly we are seeing more divorced and single men going out to salsa nights and clubs in the hope of finding a woman. In other studies, we found older men rate themselves as poor dancers.

"Not everyone can pull off the co-ordinated and complex moves. It is thought this might be linked to the amount of testosterone we are exposed to while still in the womb.

"So for those people who dance with small movements, the best thing they can do to is to put in a few random movements. This was seen as being significantly more dominant and attractive, as you become more eye-catching by putting in movements that people don't expect.

"Large random dance movements, where arms and legs were flying all over the place, were very unattractive. The most effective thing those people can do to increase their attractiveness is to keep things simple – open and close their legs and arms in time to the music."

Dr Lovatt and his colleagues are to demonstrate some of their research at Health and Human Sciences Research Institute Showcase at Hertfordshire University later this month.

Men attending the event will be invited to have their testosterone levels measured before having their own dancing skills rated. The team will then offer them tips on how to improve the way they appear on the dance floor.

But Dr Lovatt maintains that not all dancing is intended to make men appear attractive, and that some dance styles instead convey different messages.

He said: "Hip hop dancing contains a great deal of very large, asymmetric and what might appear random movements, so dominance is clearly expressed. Ballroom dancing is more difficult as there are carefully-prescribed moves, while salsa combines a freestyle element."

Sue Goodman, artistic co-ordinator of the Step into Dance project at the Royal Academy of Dance, which teaches young people how to dance in schools, said people often forget about the messages that dancing can communicate about their personality.

She said: "Dancing style very much reflects what is going on inside a person's head. If they are self-conscious, that will be reflected in the way they dance.

"For men in nightclubs, if they are doing big controlled movements, they are giving off a sense of strength and control. That sends the message they are feeling good about themselves.

"In our project, we often find at the end of the year that the school children we work with gain in confidence and feel happier after learning how to dance, so it is clear the difference this can make."

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