[M.M.X.I.V. 95] The dancing feet

Today’s Daily Prompt is called “Express Yourself,” but rather than posting a link to the Madonna song, I’ll post something else… which is more in line with what I decided to write about!

This video was taken by my Aunt Lori on December 27, 2011, when Nebraska played its first-ever Big Ten Conference men’s basketball game against Wisconsin. I was in town for the winter break, and it was a lot of fun to be there. The video shows me dancing to the band’s rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker.”

The dancing at sporting events was a result of me liking the songs that the band played when I was in high school. Some of the songs I didn’t recognize as anything that I had heard on the radio, and even some of the radio songs sounded better as pep band numbers. During my early years of sports fandom (i.e. high school), although I enjoyed the music, I didn’t really dance to it much, particularly at boys’ basketball games because there was no room to dance!

My favorite dance-to-the-band in high school was at football games, when they would do drum cadences. In some sense, the moves I did on these evolved into the more intricate (?) routines that I developed in college.

At the University of Nebraska, my usual spot at the men’s basketball games was on the east side of the Bob Devaney Sports Center, in the first row of bleachers directly behind the basket. Because this region generally had a little bit of buffer space (due to others not wanting that sort of view), I got sufficient space to dance to the band’s numbers. In my first season, the highlight songs were “KC and the Sunshine Band Medley,” “Fire,” “Offspring Medley” and “I Can’t Turn You Loose.”

Not all of the songs became ingrained in me, as some of them I improvised the choreographies each time. At Northwestern, I admit that some of the songs I have not developed well-choreographed routines yet, but it is just fun getting up and moving to the music. The aforementioned songs, however, did get a regular routine.

Other “Noah dance specialties” that got added to my repertoire during my time at UNL included “The Time Warp” (note: dancing to the beat of a different drummer–I have never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show), “Heartbreaker” (as shown above), and a few others that I can’t recall off the top of my head. By my sophomore year, people got to know me and I became fairly well-known in the Nebraska basketball circle.

Of course, I don’t dance for the notoriety. It is fun to move to the music that the band plays, and in some sense, it is indeed an expression of my eccentric personality.

I should also say that in general, I am much more expressive to band music than canned music, with a couple of notable exceptions. Since my junior year at UNL (or maybe earlier), the song “Can You Feel It” by King of House has led off each football and men’s basketball game. It is a Husker tradition for the bench to lift their helmets in the air for the opening kickoff, and I substituted my hard hat for a football helmet whenever that song plays… even if not at kickoff.

At Northwestern football games, the fourth quarter is preceded by the song “Put Your Hands Up In The Air” by Danzel, and in addition to following those instructions, it includes a hard-hat pumping.

How much fun it can be to engage in the crowd at sporting events!

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Today is the ninety-fifth day of M.M.X.I.V. That makes thirteen weeks and four days.

Other responses to the prompt as of 16:39, CDT, on 6 April 2014: