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From the honeybee waggle-dance, to the moonwalking red-capped manikin, to your dad’s awkward shuffle, everyone loves a boogie now and again. It’s hard to resist tapping your feet when a groovy tune comes on, but what is it about certain songs that make them so danceable?

Imagine, for a moment, a song where every note is played exactly on every beat – pretty boring, right? Now imagine a tune where the notes are played pretty much at random times; not a particularly enjoyable sound either. These are the two extremes of a phenomenon called syncopation; essentially, how offbeat a piece of music is. It turns out that there’s a sweet spot between these extremes, and this medium level of syncopation is found in songs that you can’t stop tapping your feet to – think “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones. Of course, the sweet spot of syncopation varies between people, but something about a little bit of unpredictability makes people want to move their feet.

So we like things a little offbeat, but why go to the effort of actually dancing? Well, dance can have a purpose other than just enjoyment of music. The honeybee takes music entirely out of the equation for its dances, which are all about communication. Having found a flower full of pollen, a worker bee will buzz back to the hive to tell everyone about it. But how does it describe the location? Directions are hard to give, even with complex language. So the bees do a “waggle-dance,” showing distance and direction relative to the sun with a choreographed shimmy. Humans, too, can communicate with dance. We’re pretty good at telling emotions, and even stories, but some ambitious scientists have gone so far as to describe their PhD theses with dance! The academic journal Science runs an annual competition called “Dance your PhD,” and the winners are seriously worth a watch – and hey, you might even learn something.

But, of course, as anyone who’s ventured into Monkey Bar will attest, dancing is mostly about sex. Often birds perform the most flamboyant mating dances – those moonwalking red-capped manikins are just hilarious, as are the bizarre blue-lipped birds of paradise. Sexual selection has developed these extreme rituals, and since it’s always ladies’ choice, it is the blokes who grow intensely colourful plumage and master the most seductive moves. But before you laugh too much, you should have a read of “Male dance moves that catch a woman’s eye.” By measuring the variation, size, and speed of movement of various joints, they found that women are most attracted to both large and variable movements of the neck and torso, and fast knee movements. Heads up, guys; arm movements didn’t count for anything, so waving them in the air is unlikely to help your cause, no matter how much the songs tell you to.

Now that you know the science of dance, why not put it into practice at the Science Ball this Friday? Check out the details on the SciCO Facebook page. Come have a boogie with us science bitches, bitches!