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Why dad dancing is glorious

Fists pumping, overbite in full operation, the 'young people' fleeing... yes, a dad dancing is perhaps the most cringeful spectacle in the civilised world - and the most glorious, insists Stuart Heritage

17 Jul 2017
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To see the Duke of Cambridge flailing around in Verbier - to see him standing beneath a spotlight, looking for all the world like he was trying to fend off the most indifferent swarm of bees - was to see a man in his element. This was a man finally freed from the constraints of expectation. Every jerk and wobble of  his awkward nearly-jig said, 'This is who I am now.'


Watch the video with any level of scrutiny and you'll also notice that he's completely alone up there. He could swing as many cats as he wanted and he wouldn't hit a soul. It's as if all his friends had deserted him in a moment of shared mortification, and yet on he goes, pumping, pumping, pumping. He doesn't care. He is Dad. See him dance.

I can relate. For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of dancing. I couldn't understand why dancing had to be so demonstrative; after all, why would anyone hurl their entire body around in an unselfconscious expression of joy when they could simply turn to a friend and mutter, 'I am relatively happy'? It didn't make any sense. Add to this the queasy suspicion that as soon as I stepped onto the dancefloor, people would stop and stare and point. It all seemed too much.

As a result, I didn't go to a single school disco. I avoided anything that even remotely resembled a dance. I even rigged my own wedding reception to be too crowded to comfortably accommodate a first dance. My own wedding, for crying out loud. As little as three years ago, I was petrified of dancing. Now, though? Just try and stop me.

The problem was that I'd always been a dad dancer. Like one of those gangly young men who suddenly blossom into distinction when they hit a certain age, I think that dad dancing was always inside of me, biding its time. Whenever I tried anything 'cool', I would fail miserably. I was an imploding, blushing tangle of  limbs and overbite, too scared of doing the wrong thing to even dream of cutting loose. But the second my son was born: blammo. A monster was unleashed, and it can never be caged again.

There are two aspects to dad dancing. The first is as clear as day in the Duke of Cambridge video. There's an element of   'hey, still got it' self-delusion that is just ferociously unshakeable. To see him - or me, or any other dad - flapping around to a 22-year-old song, surrounded by faintly embarrassed pals, is to see someone desperately clawing back the golden days of adolescence. 'FATHERHOOD HAS NOT DIMMED MY PROWESS!' we scream, even though we're knackered and covered in sick and pretty much ready for bed by half past nine.

The second is more evolutionary. When you're young and sexy and lithe and athletic, dancing is mainly a way to get people to shag you. Go to a big, dark room full of loud music, and you're effectively obscuring the bulk of your character. In a nightclub, people can't hear how noisily you eat. They don't know that you have the cold, dead eyes of a sociopath. They can't see that you've been wearing the same pair of pants for three days. They just know that you're there, and you're close, and that sex is probably on the cards. But I don't want to have sex any more. I'm married and at a point where it feels like every time I have sex, I have another kid. Sex is becoming prohibitively expensive for me, so I don't dance to attract a mate. No, I dance to make my children laugh.

A part of parenthood that isn't often discussed is the self-debasement you'll go through to get a smile out of your kids. I've spent whole afternoons flinging myself around the living room, waggling my legs in the air and farting out of my mouth just because I enjoy hearing my son laugh. It has turned me into the worst kind of craven addict. So when I'm cooking dinner in the evening, I'll dance as I do it, purely because my son gets a kick out of it. My legs will shoot off in every conceivable direction. I spin. I leap. My bum, without exaggeration, whirls around like a malfunctioning helicopter. It's a freedom of movement utterly independent of self-consciousness. If it makes him happy, I'll do it. And it does, so I do it. Again and again and again, no matter where we are or whoever happens to be watching. Something has changed inside me. This is who I am now.

So laugh at William's dad dancing all you like. But you know what? I bet Prince George bloody loves it.