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But the names, the gestures, are meaningless pressagentry. All you really have to do is shake your hips a little and then, as Sybil Burton puts it, "dance to suit yourself." Dancing to rock 'n' roll has become such a private reverie, in fact, that a partner, except in deference to custom, is not necessary. And that is its great attraction. Since couples neither touch nor even look at each other, all the shyness some men and women have about dancing—clammy hands, missing a beat, stepping on feet, etc.—is removed and, as one club owner says, "Everybody goes off into their own narcissistic bag."
The result is some of the most wildly creative dancing ever seen by modern or primitive man. In a discotheque, where the sound is so loud that conversation is impossible, the hypnotic beat works a strange magic. Many dancers become literally transported. They drift away from their partners; inhibitions flake away, eyes glaze over, until suddenly they are seemingly swimming alone in a sea of sound. Says Sheila Wilson, 18, a student at Vassar: "I give everything that is in me. And when I get going, I'm gone. It's the only time I feel whole."
The highly sensual implications of big-beat dancing have some psychiatrists worried. Says one: "It's sick sex turned into a spectator sport." The voyeur aspects are considerable. Hollywood A-Go-Go, one of the six nationally aired rock 'n' roll TV shows (including ABC's Shindig and NBC's Hullabaloo) that have debuted in the past year, features a line of young nubile blondes whose dancing would bring a blush to the cheeks of a burlesque stripper.
Healthy Outlet. Most sociologists, who take this sort of thing seriously, agree that the sensuality of rock 'n' roll is "safe sex." One cynical college observer has concluded that girls "who don't" dance more vigorously than girls "who do." "These dances," says Harvard Psychiatrist Philip Solomon, "are outlets for restlessness, for unexpressed and sublimated sex desires. This is quite healthy."
Many teen-agers consider all the orgiastic screaming as "uncool." The idols themselves have noted that the frantic fans who storm the stages are predominantly homely girls. Says Jeanne Katzenberg, a pretty 16-year-old: "Nobody in my group has crushes on the singers or anything. We all have real boy friends."