Hormones in Couples and Partner Dancing

Have you ever been told your steps are too big or not big enough or that you're moving to much or maybe not enough? The cause might be hormones.

Hormones cause a change in the way we move and respond to music. Sometimes those changes are just what the doctor wanted. Sometimes they are not. By first understanding how hormones affect the way we move in response to music and why we do that, we can then make a conscious effort to override our natural tendencies and dance how we wish.

But even before that, I should explain how this knowledge was first found.

The research was conducted by Dr Peter Lovatt. He is also sometimes called 'Dr Dance.' Peter was a professional dancer until the age of 26. After that he went to university and eventually ended up becoming a researcher in the psychology of the performing arts.

As part of this research, Peter went to a club to get samples of dancers to video tape. After he recorder these people dancing he converted the video to a silhouette. That way if anyone was to watch the video, then they could only judge the attractiveness based on movement and not the face of the person. Peter also measured the length of the ring and index fingers of each dancer. The relationship between the two fingers is strongly believed to correlate with the amount of testosterone an individual was exposed to in the womb. Thus, Peter could correlate dance style with hormone exposure.

After the video was shown to other people it was found that women were more attracted to men who had been exposed to more testosterone and men were more attracted to women who had been exposed to less. Remember, this was based purely on dance style. This means that our dance style can actually communicate (even though we do not know it) hormone levels to people of the opposite sex.

If our hormones control our dance without us knowing it, then there is a variable to our dance style that we have not yet accounted for. But what are the effects.

With more testosterone (these were the attractive ones) men tend to have larger movements. To increase the attractiveness, complexity of movement helped.

Women who had lower testosterone (and thought more attractive via their dance) made more subtle movement - especially with their hips.

If your teacher says that your movement is too much, then it could be the testosterone you were exposed to. Same goes if your movement is too small. But what to do about it?

You can change what you were exposed to before you were born so the best thing to do is work out of it might be a factor and then account for it consciously. Measure you index finger and your ring finger. If the index finger is a bit shorter, then you were exposed to more testosterone, and tend toward large movements. If the index finger is about the same or longer, then you were exposed to less, and tend toward smaller movements.

You can use this to work out if you need to put effort into restricting your movement. You might need to control your movements at times - say you're a high testosterone woman who wants to look better on the dance floor. Or, you might want to put more effort in - say you're a man who needs to lead some large steps in Waltz. Knowing your tendency simply helps you compromise for it.