Dancing with Myself

When there's no one else in sight
In the crowded, lonely night
Well, I wait so long
For my love vibration
And I'm dancing with myself.

— Billy Idol, "Dancing with Myself"

In some cases, a program — or advertisement — will show someone dancing by themselves. Typically this is a person doing a side-to-side move but depending on how well they do, it could be quite good. (Note that the music video of the eponymous song shows Billy Idol fighting off zombies, and holding onto a transformer and shooting electricity at them, but he never dances)

Compare Everything Has Rhythm when a character dances with a prop. See also "Risky Business" Dance.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Allstate insurance showed people dancing by themselves when they discovered they saved money over their previous car insurance company.
• The old Apple iPod ads iconically featured silhouettes of people dancing by themselves.
• The Washington, D.C. area Value City Furniture shows people dancing by themselves next to the ad copy.

Fan Works

• The Bolt Chronicles: The climactic dance scene in "The Wedding Reception" at first features Bolt alone on the dance floor, backed by "Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)" by The Contours. Mittens and Rhino join him later.
• Justified in You Were My Best Friend since, like any person learning how to dance, kid!Bloom practices on her own. She mainly dances ballet and jazz, and whenever she gets in the zone, she magically transports herself to Andros.

Film — Live-Action

• Ballistic Kiss: Protagonist Cat, a Professional Killer who lives all alone, tends to dance with himself every night while thinking of his past.
• In Bring It On, Torrance dances and jumps on her bed as she listens to the demo tape Cliff gives her.
• The Game Changer has Qian-Qian, dancing by herself to classical music in her bedroom, even when Zi-Hao is in the same room with her. She's tempting him to join her, after all.
• In Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom does this in the fourth movie. In his pajamas.
• High Risk has an example that overlaps with Soundtrack Dissonance, as the Dark Action Girl henchwoman kills off the staff in a surveillance room to facilitate a terrorist takeover in a hotel. The henchwoman then flicks on a radio playing classical ballroom music, and starts an impromptu tap-dance by herself in a room containing the corpses of guards she killed, while the scene is inter-cut with several terrorists slaughtering the staff in the hotel's lobby.
• Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister in Love Actually... before being caught and quickly shrugging it off.
• The Mermaid: Liu Xuan, a playboy property tycoon, have a quick impromptu tap-dance by himself after scolding a bunch of his employees.
• Tom Cruise's famous "Risky Business" Dance in his underwear to the tune of Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" is one of the highlights to the film Risky Business.
• In the film Royal Wedding, Fred Astaire does an amazing dance with a coat rack for a partner, and makes the coat rack actually look like it knows how to dance. A YouTube clip appears here.
• In The Slipper and the Rose, Cinderella and the Prince both do this during the song "He/She Danced With Me", as they remember their dance with each other.
• Strictly Ballroom: After Scott's dance partner ditches him he dances alone in his parents studio to try out the new steps he wants to introduce. His dance is cut short when he realises Fran is watching him, which leads to her offering to be his new partner.
• In An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh as protagonist Erica, at the start of the movie after kissing her husband and daughter goodbye but before getting completely dressed for work, Absurdly Youthful Mother Erica reflects on how lucky her life is and starts performing an impromptu performance of the ballet "Swan Lake"... in her pajamas and panties. This scene happens roughly five minutes into the film, by the way.
• For some reason, in Van Helsing Dracula does this at one point.

Literature

• Classic Singapore Horror Stories: The short story, Skin Deep, have Emma (daughter of the protagonist, Dr. Raymond) dancing to herself after a late night partying in her underwear, waking up her father who then walks into her room without knocking. The sight of Emma all exposed only adds more fuel to the story's Parental Incest nature, with the narration suddenly becoming strangely fanservice-y (note that this story is told from a first-person perspective).
  "...her pale white BeeDees gleaming in the dim moonlight in her darkened bedroom, as her body twists and tangles..."

Live-Action TV

• In the Friends episode, "The One With the Ballroom Dancing", Joey is seen ballroom dancing by himself after the cleaning man (who had been using Joey as a practice partner) had to leave.
• Artie on Glee performs the song and rehearses by himself in the auditorium in Season One episode "Wheels."
• In the first episode of The Haunting of Hill House (2018), Nell - who isn't the most mentally stable person around - is seen waltzing around the dilapidated Hill House by herself when she pays it a visit shortly before she apparently kills herself. In the later episode "The Bent Neck Lady", it's revealed that from Nell's perspective, she actually wasn't alone and dancing with her late husband, with the house using this to try and trap her.
• Neil from The Inbetweeners demonstrates an amazing level of dancing skill at a Caravan Club party. This skill gets a Call-Back in The Movie, where Neil starts an Accidental Dance Craze with some hilariously awkward moves.
• Dan from One Tree Hill is seen practicing dancing with his iPod in his ears, much to the embarrassment of Nathan who catches him.
• Too Old to Die Young:
  • Alfonso is seen dancing by himself at a cartel gathering, exulting in the group's power.
  • In the final episode, Diana performs an extended and triumphant dance by herself in her home, possibly as part of her apotheosis into the goddess of her prophesied age of innocence.
• Betty from Ugly Betty dances with herself to the song by Billy Idol in a crowded dance party while Matt looks on. This is in the episode Plus None.

Music

• The Jessie J song "It's My Party" includes the lines "so while you sit and watch me/I keep dancing alone" in the chorus.
• Not a visual example, but the Christina Perri song "The Lonely" mentions this in the chorus:
  Dancing slowly in an empty room
  Can The Lonely take the place of you?

Video Games

• Moshi Monsters: Sometimes, the monsters (and Moshlings, their pets), will do a Happy Dance by themselves.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: During an interlude between chapters. Princess Peach winds up waltzing with a hologram of herself provided by TEC-XX.
• Shovel Knight: During the Plague Of Shadows campaign, upon returning to the potionarium at one point, Mona can be seen dancing around by herself. Letting the sequence play out for too long without entering the room (and embarrassing her at getting caught) earns the Cosmetic Award "Creep".

Western Animation

• Slow dance enthusiast Jimmy Pesto, Jr. does this a lot on Bob's Burgers.
• As he tries to calm down a midlife crisis, Hard-Drinking Party Girl Lois in Family Guy, Peter meets Mayor Adam West, who is looking for his clean laundry. Peter discovers that West has confused the nightclub with a laundry, and there's even a Cutaway Gag of Mayor West dancing wildly in the waiting area of a laundry as the staff behind the counter work as usual; the sound of the telephone chimes and West cheers, "I love this song!" and dances even wilder.
• Steven Universe
  • In the episode "Reunited", Garnet dances by herself after Ruby and Sapphire get married. Garnet is their fusion, however, so jury's out on whether or not she counts as two people.
  • In "Change Your Mind", Steven's gem gets removed from his body and reforms into Pink Steven. The two of them fuse back together by dancing and Cry Laughing. This example is a lot less ambiguous than the above, since the two Stevens are two halves of one whole and cannot live without eachother.

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