The bad news is, “Dancing with Sharks,” billed as “the world’s most dangerous dance competition,” seems awfully ridiculous. The good news? Well, the annual Shark Week (this is the 37th season) series on Discovery Channel attempts to raise awareness of ocean issues, conservation efforts and correcting misconceptions about sharks (borne of even more ridiculous movies like “Jaws”). And it’s got “dance” in the title!
Shark Week does inform viewers about how issues like global warming are changing our oceans and shark behavior as well as inspiring future marine biologists and scientists. And shark handlers are actually a thing, they just don’t typically dance for judges. You can see shark dancers featured this season here in an AP story and in this video.
Unfounded fears can be very limiting, as we dancers know. Shark Week will tackle one universal fear by telling us, in one of the episodes, “How to Survive a Shark Attack.” Many of us can relate stories regarding our own fears about dancing, and know friends who would rather do just about anything than dance in public. For instance, Johnny Depp once said, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, that he “fears [dancing] more than anything in the world” and that he’d rather “swallow a bag of hair” than dance. Perhaps Shark Week is worth a watch if it offers ideas on how we can use similar principles to help encourage others to overcome their fear of dancing, and hopefully prevent a hairball or two.
See you on the dance/ocean floor. —Sean Donovan