Dancing With Your Coworkers

“That actually relaxed a part of my brain that hasn’t been relaxed all summer” - Sharon, 2025 Product Design Intern, after taking a beginner swing dancing class that I’ve been working on convincing her to try out since the internship started. 

I first tried social dancing a couple of years ago, after it seemed like everybody I knew had taken up swing dancing freshman year of college, and I haven’t looked back since. Social dancing refers to any partnered or group dance where the primary purpose is to participate and socialize, rather than compete or perform. I’ll do and try anything - salsa, swing, bachata, line, contra, folk, ecstatic, waltz, tango. Since picking up this hobby, “Do you have any interest in dancing?” has become a question I ask at some point or another to almost everybody I meet. And so, when I started my internship at Viget this summer, in my hometown of Boulder, where I’m already quite involved in the dance scene, I knew I’d be in recruitment mode.

I started off small, peppering the fact that I dance and love to bring people into the getting to know you conversations we were having. Soon I moved onto verbal invites and yes- office-wide Slack messages, putting it out there that anybody was welcome to join, any time! Oftentimes, the message would get a couple of likes, maybe a 💃 or 🕺 emoji, no other responses. And that was okay, I knew that week after week, the idea was burrowing into the minds of my coworkers. As one said,  “just keep asking and keep reminding me, one of these weeks will be the one!”

My first recruits were Sharon and Emily, our UX Research intern, trying out something new in the buzz of activities and socializing of the first couple of weeks of the internship! They joined me for salsa dancing! Took the crowded beginner class! And… I don’t think they liked it. Both headed out early, and I missed the chance to do my post-class debrief, to see if they had any questions or things I could clear up. I forget what it’s like sometimes to be in your first beginner class- overwhelming and intimidating, trying to make out the voice of the teacher amidst the 50 others in the class, and every time you’re supposed to switch partners, it’s a small trainwreck to rotate counterclockwise. I was worried Sharon and Emily had been scared off.

Yet two weeks later, while Emily and I were getting lunch in the Viget office kitchen, she mentioned offhand, “I think I’ll go to salsa this week.” No prompting or convincing from me needed!! She wanted to try again! The second time makes a world of difference once you’ve been exposed to the basic steps, you have some background knowledge, and you can start making connections. Emily continued to join me in the weeks after, even bringing her boyfriend while he was visiting, becoming a recruiter for dancing of her own!

Meanwhile, I was still working on the rest of the coworkers, trying to see if I could get vague curiosity to turn into action. I took advantage of a challenge for Viget’s annual intern competition to teach a line dance in the office. The interns and one full timer that I’d convinced to join were skeptical at first, slightly self-conscious, but we counted and stepped and kicked and laughed and got faster until we were matching the tempo of the song. And at the end, as we watched the video back, everyone remarked, “Wow, we don’t actually look that bad!” Dancing had become something that was learnable, doable, and fun.

The second-to-last week of the internship was my final push - a free, outdoor, very beginner-friendly swing class on Friday after work. I got promising responses all week, but by Friday, the usual culprits- circumstances, fatigue, things that came up - meant it was just Sharon and Emily joining me, fewer than my reach goal of ~6 coworkers, but still two people dancing! I made sure to grab the two of them after the class and give a mini private lesson, solidifying the steps. They were both confused and felt like they hadn’t gotten it during the main class, but I took a turn leading each of them, and a minute later, I said, “That’s everything we did in class! You know it, trust yourselves!” I danced with them, then sent them off to dance with other people (a key part, even when you’re just starting, go dance with people that are better with you!) We came back together at the end, and that’s when Sharon said, “That actually relaxed a part of my brain that hasn’t been relaxed all summer.” 

Moving to a new city for a summer internship can be really isolating. To know nobody but your coworkers, who you see every day, and even at the many Viget social events, always in the context of “Work”. Social dancing is such a departure from sitting at our desks, an entirely different context. It’s exposing and vulnerable, but you’re in it together, both with the friends (and/or coworkers!) that you go with as well as the strangers you’re dancing with. It’s a profoundly connecting experience, as you hold hands and twirl and count and laugh and learn from each other, or perhaps just jointly agree how difficult this is. 

I might be remembered at Viget as the annoying intern who wouldn’t stop trying to convince the Boulder office to go out dancing. Yet, Emily has already looked up where she can go salsa dancing back in her college town. Sharon will remember that “fever dream” of a night of swing dancing under the stars. And even for those coworkers who never got around to getting onto the dance floor, the idea is there, in their heads. A little while down the line, it’ll come up again, in conversation, maybe with another new coworker: “Oh, I knew someone once that did swing dancing!” A connection. That’s how everybody starts.