Will kids in the new Footloose be dancing close-in?

Probably not, judging from this snapshot of a big dance scene, where everyone is isolated and not even making eye-contact with anyone else, facing anyone else, or even particularly close to anyone else. Slow dancing? Even less likely.

Some people must think I'm just making shit up here sometimes about kids these days, but you wouldn't know unless you had the first-hand experience. Just go to a club where it's mostly college students and see how much face-to-face, close-in dancing there is -- especially among people who just met, not those who are already in a steady relationship.

In fact, last week at '80s night a pretty cute girl about 18 or 19 hopped up on stage right next to me when "Like a Prayer" came on, wanting to dance. With my left hand I took her right, and put my right hand on her hip, pulling her in so we were touching. It always takes about 5 solid seconds to even establish basic hand-to-body contact that way because they expect you to put your hands on their hips from behind and let them give you a standing lapdance; anything else is confusing and something they have to figure out. She said, oh so we're like classic dancinggg! and looked nervous to be out of her element, but was still smiling and had her eyes open wide at the novelty of it.

To put her more at ease, I told her that she was pretty good, most girls don't know how to. omigod, i totally don't know how to eitherrr!!! At least she knew to put her free hand on my shoulder. We weren't even doing anything complicated -- just the fact that we were close and facing each other made it a completely foreign experience for her.

That's pretty typical, except for the open admission that it was her first time. And these are not the fat and ugly and awkward girls, who you might expect not to have danced with a boy for real at that age. They're pretty, very outgoing (venturing out to a nightclub must put them in the top 2% for their age group), and eager enough to jump on stage for a dance.

The first dance I went to was in 6th grade, fall of 1992, along with every single other student in that middle school. And that was only one of probably four to six dances we had. We got practice early on dancing with each other as a way to build trust. If you lack the trust to even look each other in the eye and stand close to each other, obviously nothing longer-lasting will ever develop, and you will lack the appreciation that a boy and a girl complete each other in a cosmic sense, as above the everyday observation that some girls are pretty and maybe even fun to hang out with.

By high school (fall of '95), school dances were already dwindling in popularity, and the terrible pop music out at the time did not help. By now they're practically non-existent, except for high-pressure proto-weddings like Homecoming or Prom, complete with Bridezilla meltdowns among the girls. Those less formal and more regular dances that used to be common even into the early '90s took a lot of that pressure off, allowing kids the comfort to grow socially and emotionally. With too little practice, and with a paralyzing high level of stress, you produce college-aged girls who've never really danced with a boy before.

It would be timely to make a female adaptation of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, but since girls would take it too personally instead of laughing, it would probably not sell many tickets (few guys would go see any chick flick).