Our Generation’s Dance: How it defines us

By Jarrett Gosch

The 20’s had the Charleston, the 60’s had the Twist, and the 80’s had Break dancing.

Our generation has Grinding.

Grinding is a dance in which the girl usually leads, with both partners “connected” at the hips, often rubbing her backside to his front. This doesn’t sound very creative; it seems more like a direct imitation of a sexual action. 

The history of grinding is somewhat of a mystery. Nobody seems to agree where this dance originated from. While some internet sites suggest that grinding was adapted from the dance Lambada, others think that it came from the close dancing featured in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. Either way, many agree that this type of dancing started showing up in schools during the mid-nineties; making grinding a 15-year-old fad.

So with a fad so old, why hasn’t it died like many other fads we have seen come and go? I think it could have something to do the sense of rebellion that students feel when they participate in something that they know adults don’t approve of.

 It is true that the appropriateness of modern dancing is an age old debate that plagued many generations. But there has to be a line drawn between actual dancing and blatant sexual inappropriateness, or this “dancing” could easily escalate further and likely have all school dances completely banned.

Many students believe that grinding is really just a harmless dance that has nothing to do with being sexual.

“It’s not dirty to us; it’s what we are used to. What we walked into freshman year and saw [that] it’s just dancing together, you know? [It's] Not like we’re standing there having sex, it’s just two people dancing,” Shayley Morris 12 said.

Whether or not students believe that grinding is their right, it has proven to be the easiest way to get dances canceled. At the next dance, I hope that more students realize how the way they dance defines our generation and how we are seen.