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By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
For years, choreographed dances like the Macarena, electric slide, YMCA, cha-cha slide, and the wobble have brought people too shy to come up with their own moves onto the dance floor.
Unsurprisingly, the younger generations has digitized this phenomenon into a video game - and it was on full display last Friday at the Dover Town Library.
Using the library’s Nintendo Switch, teen volunteer Valentina Zhang organized a game of Just Dance for kids, teens, librarians, Hometown Weekly reporters, and anyone else that heard the thumping music coming from the library’s basement and wanted to give it a try.
Unlike something as difficult as Dance Dance Revolution, the previous benchmark for dance-related video games, the key to the widespread appeal of Just Dance is its simplicity.
“Just Dance is this game where two people compete with each other in dancing. There’s a person on the screen and you have this little controller in your hand and by dancing, you try and copy the person on the screen,” explained Zhang. “Whoever dances better wins, I guess.”
With songs like Billy Joel’s “I’m Still Standing,” Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and a couple of songs from the Disney movie “Coco,” the game had something for all ages - which was good, because almost all ages were represented.
It was abundantly clear how much fun the participants, who ranged from adult librarians to kids barely old enough to hold the controller, were having - even if the moves in the library didn’t quite match the moves on the screen. This wasn’t surprising, however. Zhang understood that botching the dances is part of the fun, and a huge part of the bonding nature of playing the game.
“I thought it would be a fun way to bond the community,” she commented. “I think if two people don’t know each other and then they dance with each other, you can at least laugh when you dance wrong or something. I think it can be a fun way for people to get to know each other.”
“Just Dance” was only one of the activities the teen group has set up. There’s also a program in which they help children read, and they even set up a space-themed escape room, designed to force teens to work with each other.
But on Friday, it was dancing (with a little digital help) that brought everyone at The Dover Library together.
