Today on Crosscut:

An Adult Goes to Prom: The dresses, the dances — it’s all pretty shocking

…after seeing the dance floor, I fully understood the need for short dresses. The preferred dance style is with the young fellow standing behind the young lady, who has her back turned to him. The young lady backs up until her backside is in contact with the young fellow’s frontside, and then she gyrates while the young fellow steps from side to side and bobs his head…. It was a little unnerving to see beautifully clad and fresh-faced young adults taking part in what were essentially lap dances.

Perhaps the new dirty dance style is understandable. Over the years, women (young and old) have gotten tired of hearing men tell them they don’t want to dance. So maybe one day a young woman said to her boyfriend, “OK, fine. You don’t have to dance. Just stand there while I rub up against you to the beat of the music.” This was really what the young man had wanted all along, so he agreed.

Six and a half years ago in the Washington Post :

Blue and red light beams blend, spreading hazy purple air. As the hip-hop pounds, the hips intermix; they’re 14-, 15-, 16-year-old hips. They’re boys’ hips, girls’ hips, front to front, back to front. It’s twos, it’s threes; standing up, bending over.

It looks like sex, but it’s dancing. It’s called freak dancing, and teenagers of all types are freaking at middle and high school events across the country. And though pairs of grinding pelvises filled the floor at a Valentine’s Day dance at a suburban Washington public high school, it might well have been the tamest freaking on record: The kids stayed dressed and on their feet.