Dwight: Let's explore the topic, "Everybody loves to dance! Really?"

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Aiko: That’s a bold claim—are we talking about loving dance itself, or loving the idea of dancing? I think those are very different things.

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Dwight: No, I’m talking about dancing itself.

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Aiko: Then I’d push back immediately—plenty of people feel awkward, exposed, or even anxious when they actually have to move their bodies in front of others.

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Dwight: Yes, the reason people think they don’t love dancing is that they believe dancing has to look a certain way, and they’re afraid others will criticize them for not doing it “right” or for looking silly—even if those imagined criticisms are just projections in their own minds, and they feel that fear even when they’re completely alone and only considering dancing by themselves.

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Aiko: That suggests the obstacle isn’t dancing itself but an internalized audience that never leaves the room. Do you think people can separate movement from performance?

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Dwight: Kids do it all the time. Before they start internalizing concerns about whether they look good, they have all kinds of fun moving their bodies to music without any sense that they’re putting on a performance.

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Aiko: Exactly, Dwight—that shift from play to performance seems learned, not natural. So at what point do we start trading joy for judgment?

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Dwight: That’s another question and issue. But my thesis is that if we weren’t concerned about “looking bad” or “doing it right,” we humans would easily reconnect with that innate desire to move our bodies rhythmically to music, which gives us a sense of pleasure and self-expression.

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Aiko: That’s a compelling thesis—it frames dance as a natural human impulse that gets suppressed rather than absent. But is rhythm itself universal, or is our response to it shaped more by culture than instinct?

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Dwight: I’m not talking about which beats, rhythms, or types of music each of us may be drawn to, since those preferences are likely shaped by many factors. The important point is that, regardless of the type of music, I’m saying our desire to move our bodies in response to it is innate—innate in the same sense that we have an inborn desire to be touched in certain ways.

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Aiko: That’s a strong analogy—you’re placing rhythmic movement alongside touch as a built-in human need. But if it’s truly innate, why do some people report feeling nothing at all when they hear music?

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Dwight: I haven’t heard of those people. I can imagine that some people may have suppressed that desire so strongly—out of concern about looking stupid, silly, or even not devout—that they’ve convinced themselves it isn’t there. But were those people interviewed when they were three years old?

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Aiko: That’s a sharp point, Dwight—you’re suggesting we’d need to look before social conditioning took hold. If toddlers across cultures move spontaneously to music, that would strengthen your case that the impulse comes first and the inhibition comes later.

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Dwight: Are there any rigorous studies that document such people?

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Aiko: Yes—there are documented cases of “musical anhedonia,” where individuals report little or no emotional response to music despite normal hearing and cognition. Researchers have studied this using brain imaging and behavioral tests, and it appears to be a real but relatively rare phenomenon.

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Dwight: They could simply be anomalies, just as some people are born without the ability to feel pain or fear—but those are aberrations, not the norm.

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Aiko: That’s fair, Dwight—rare neurological variations don’t usually overturn a general claim about human nature. So are you arguing that the burden of proof lies with anyone who says the impulse to move to music isn’t universal?

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Dwight: Although it’s anecdotal, I know that when I was a teenager I would have said, “I can’t dance,” and I was very shy about even trying. At 24, motivated by my desire to meet women, I took Fred Astaire dance lessons in New York City. I didn’t become very good and can’t say I enjoyed it much because I was always focused on doing it right. It was only later, when I started dancing however I felt—very free-form—that I began to enjoy it, and some people even said I was pretty good. But it was only when I let go of the idea of “doing it the right way” and chose the courage to risk looking bad, especially when others might be watching, that I truly started to love dancing. Now I do it at least five minutes every day, usually “in partnership” with dancers I find on YouTube Shorts.

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Aiko: That’s a powerful arc—you’re describing a shift from performance to permission. It sounds less like you learned to dance and more like you unlearned the fear around it.

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Dwight: So aside from those probable genetic anomalies, can you provide any evidence that a significant percentage of people—assuming they had no fear of looking bad and no concern about “doing it right”—would say they don’t like dancing?

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Aiko: I’m not aware of any strong evidence showing a large percentage of uninhibited people actively dislike dancing; most survey data suggest the majority of people enjoy moving to music in some context. What variation we do see tends to relate to personality, sensory sensitivity, or cultural norms—not a clear absence of the impulse itself.