4. African dance.

There are so many things I love about African dance that I'm going to make a list in order to try and keep from gushing mindlessly.

1. It's good for your body. Oftentimes in African dance, your head is constantly bobbing up and down and your arms are making circles, so it's fantastic for students or office workers with stiff necks. (Be careful at first, though!) There's always room for variation, so your knees won't get twisted or your hips achy. It's also an amazingly good work-out - if you don't believe me, try bouncing up and down while spinning your arms in circles for an hour. I've done a few different sorts of dance from ballet to hip hop, and African is the one that has left me most exhausted after a lesson.

2. There's room for individuality. It's a misconception that African dance doesn't have its set esthetics, but it is true there is more leeway than with, say, classical ballet. Movements aim to be natural rather than carbon copies of the instructor's. Bizzarrely, this makes African dance all the more challenging (for me, at least): it's much more difficult to try and figure out exactly what it is that makes the instructor skip gracefully while I look like an elephant dashing through the jungle.

3. There's a lot of imaging, and it actually makes sense. Moves of African dance are often based on concrete, easy-to-visualize actions. My favourite is the drunken man, but there's also sowing the seeds, sending love letters, or throwing the spear.

4. There's variety. Even as a novice at African dance, I know I should really talk about African dances. There are numerous - or countless - different types of African dance in different parts of the continent. This allows for gentle, elegant movements with swaying hips or juttery foot-stomping with rigid arms.

5. Rhythm and drums. African drumming can be wildly different from Western music and sometimes downright difficult to follow. It does, however, add a whole new layer to the dances, especially if there are live drummers. The drummers control shifts from one move or tempo to another. In Africa, drummers sometimes are the dancers.

6. The communality. Anthropologists assure us that drumming and dance are a crucial force bringing a village together and educating young children. I wouldn't know, but for my part I do enjoy the bond - no matter how tenuous and brief - that African dance can create. It feels lovely to sing songs you can't understand after the instructor and hearing oral tradition in action possibly for the first time in your life. Also, Europeans who are into African-style drumming tend to be hippies who don't mind you skipping your way in front of them and pulling out your best moves.

7. I wasn't able to find any really good dance clips on Youtube, but I did find this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2cYwjiM79U Now that's what I call drumming with style.