The Cha Cha Slide is not a song. It is a set of instructions with a beat under it. Cupid Shuffle, Casper Slide, the Macarena, same category. Somebody talks, you obey, the crowd obeys with you, and everyone agrees afterward that dancing occurred.
It did not.
Here is what actually happens at a wedding. Eleven people are on the floor. The rest are at the tables with a drink, having decided years ago that they do not dance, a position they have held publicly and consistently. Then the DJ puts on the Cha Cha Slide and every one of them stands up. Every single one. The same fucking people. They walk out there like they have been called to the front of a classroom, like it's "their song", like they are the best at taking instructions, with full confidence, and they wait for the first dumb instruction.
To the left. Take it back now y'all. One hop this time.
And they do it. Correctly. On time. With their whole chest. And they think they are cool because they did it. Or they play that stupid bashful act making it even worse.
Then the song ends and they go straight back to the table and resume not dancing, laughing and smiling at the table as though they just proved something and how "wild" it is that they just did that.
It is a task, and they like tasks
Nobody out there is dancing. They are completing a worksheet. There is a prompt, there is a correct response, and there is immediate confirmation you got it right because forty other people did the SAME THING at the SAME MOMENT. That is not music. That is a fire drill with a beat.
Real dancing has no answer key. You hear something and you have to decide, personally, in public, what your body is going to do about it. That is the entire reason many people do not do it. The instructional song removes the deciding, which was the whole thing, and then everybody congratulates themselves for participating.
This is Hooked on Phonics
Sound it out. Slide to the left. Very good.
A grown adult in a rented suit being read step-by-step directions and executing them in front of his extended family, and calling it a good time. The song is doing all the work. The song is the only adult in the room. Everyone else is following along with a finger under the words like the sheep that they are.
There is one exception
A wedding with a ninety-year-old, a pack of pre-teens, and somebody's coworkers who do not know a single person in the building. The DJ has to get bodies on the floor and nothing else will do it. Fine. That is a real job and the instructional song is the only tool that works and the DJ knows that the masses like to follow instead of lead.
Everywhere else it is a bit.
How to survive it
- Do the moves early and wrong. Left when it says right. Confidently. Loudly. The people around you are running on peripheral vision to stay in sync and you can take down an entire quadrant of the floor by yourself. Nobody will ever be able to prove it was on purpose.
- Stop cold in the middle. Just stop. Stand there. Let everyone continue around you. There is no rule covering this and no DJ has ever addressed it out loud. You will not be asked to dance again for years.
- Ask what a Charlie Brown is. Out loud, to the person next to you, while the song is instructing you to do one. Nobody knows. Nobody has ever known. Watch a grown man try to define it while doing it.
- Do the Macarena to the Cha Cha Slide. Wrong song, full commitment. It reads as a mistake for about eleven seconds and then it reads as a decision, and that is where it gets good.
- Take the request literally. How low can you go. Go all the way down. All the way. Stay there. Make it a problem for everyone who has to step around you and the two people who now have to get you up.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Cha Cha Slide dancing?
No.
What about the Cupid Shuffle?
Also no.
The Electric Slide?
No narrator on that one, so those people chose to be there. Worse.
Why does it work on everybody?
Because there's a right answer, and people love having a right answer more than they love music.
Isn't it just fun though?
Fun is doing something that might not work. Nothing here might not work. That's why they all got up.
So what's the problem?
There isn't one. Do it. Just don't call it dancing. We're just spreading the blunt truth.
A note on safety
None of this is advice. Number five has separated a shoulder and it was not even our wedding. We sell merch. We are not qualified to tell you how to conduct yourself at your cousin's reception, your work party, or the bar mitzvah where you know three people. If your knees are already a situation, sit out the one hop this time. Do what you want. You were going to.
