Glenn: Two years ago my brother and I thoroughly embarrassed ourselves by playing “Dance Central” for the Xbox 360 Kinect at a social gathering. Unlike other dance games like “Dance Dance Revolution” or “Just Dance” players in “Dance Central” have to use their entire body to pull off dance moves. That Christmas, my mother and I schemed and bought my brother “Dance Central 2” as a gag gift. 

We played it as a joke at first. Then, we got good. So naturally, for the last video game Brawl of the year I decided that Chris and I should embarrass ourselves and have a dance battle.

Chris: Let me just get this out of the way. I am a terrible dancer. It’s really no surprise when you combine my general lack of musical ability with my inherent awkwardness. I really try to avoid dancing at all costs.

Glenn: In my youth I was the king of the dance floor. At a relative’s wedding, I cut up the dance floor for a solid two hours. The DJ called me “Glenn the party animal.” A video game involving dancing? Should be a piece of cake.

Chris: Despite my lack of dancing ability, I like to think that I at least know what good dancing looks like. The makers of “Dance Central” apparently threw that out the window. I’m not sure what it is we were supposed to be doing with our bodies, but rest assured I’ve never seen it in a club (… why do I feel like that sentence got awkward as soon as I involved the word ‘bodies?’ Moving on.)

Glenn: Bodies tend to make things awkward…

Chris is right though, the “dance moves” in “Dance Central” are the kinds of dance moves you see in a music video for a bad pop song with an annoying dance. The entire time you are “dancing” you can’t help but laugh, either at the stupidity of the moves or at the fact that you are flawlessly executing them. It’s hard to know which is more pathetic.

Chris: When posing the question “which is more pathetic?” the answer is always my dancing. While Glenn may have been executing the moves perfectly, I was a mess of flying limbs and awkward pauses trying to catch up and restart. 

Glenn: I wanted Chris to get a fair shot, so I picked the iconic “Dragostea din tei (Numa Numa)” by O-Zone and gave Chris a crash course in the game. A few moves in and Chris seemed to be understanding the game, as a concept, much the same way that I understand that rugby is a game involving moving a ball from point A to point B. When he didn’t seem to be improving after a few minutes a grin began to spread across my face. “Dinner and a show” I thought.

Chris: After the practice song (after which I really thought I might be getting the hang of it), we chose to go ahead and play for real. The problem: which song should we pick? Glenn did not want any part of the process, so I thought I would at least choose something I was familiar with. I used to blast “Fire Burnin’” by Sean Kingston in my car in high school, and when no one was around I probably had some kind of God-awful dance that went along with my glass-shattering rendition. I could only benefit from that, right? Don’t answer that question.

Glenn: I have no particular love for the song, but fortunately for Chris, I’ve never actually played “Fire Burnin” so I had the same amount of experience for this song as Chris. I started sweating (the irony was not lost on me) as we starting “dancing” to “Fire Burnin.” When I glanced up at the score and realized that his score could fit in mine at least ten times, I started to worry less.

Chris: Then things just got stupid. I mean really stupid. The game had to be joking with us, right? I knew coming in that “Dance Central” was a game set up specifically to make rational human beings look like idiots, but this was just ridiculous. Neither Glenn or I knew what we were supposed to be doing, and there reached a point where we really didn’t care to try. I’ve never been on acid (or any other drug for that matter), but I can only imagine that the only way I would have thought to do the dance moves that were being suggested to us would have been to slip into a drug-induced haze. We both stumbled away in laughter and decided to start a new song.

Glenn: We asked Melanie to pick a song for us and after she stumbled around with the Kinect’s goofy controls she landed on “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida. I audibly groaned. But, fair is fair, so we started this new song hoping the moves would make some sense.

Spoiler alert: they didn’t.

Chris: The irony most certainly did not escape me. The “Club” absolutely could “Handle” my entirely sober 160-pound awkward ginger dance moves. 

Glenn: These moves were not much better. Lots of fist pumps and twists. Chris and I were laughing like idiots at the absurdity of these dance moves. There was a moment when we were moving our arms in a simulated wave that ranks pretty highly on the stupidest looking things I’ve ever done, and I played golf. Nevertheless the song proceeded and when we reached the “Freestyle” section of the song we both did the lamest moves we could think of. 

Chris: Less than a week after my 21st birthday, I really regret not getting sauced up for this week’s Brawl. And I don’t mean that I should have been drunk for the hilarity of playing a dancing video game under the influence. I mean that it would have been the only way that I could have possibly competed. Would alcohol be considered a Performance Enhancing Drug for “Dance Central?” 

Glenn: I’m not sure anything would have helped Chris in the Brawl. His ginger limbs were always at least a solid second behind the avatars on screen and the look of confusion at a new dance move never got old. 

Chris: You know, watching me you might have thought I was afraid to make a fool of myself. That wasn’t the case at all. I got over that fear a long time ago. I am just really that awful at copying dance moves and executing them. 

Glenn: In the end, Chris finished with some 31,000 points and I finished somewhere around 176,000, so it wasn’t exactly a close game but it was certainly one of our more entertaining Brawls. Turns out, the club couldn’t handle my intense dance moves.

Chris: Next time, Glenn and I will risk life and limb to bring you a final Brawl to remember. Hint: it involves trampolines.