If you hear the words “Trump” and “dance” in the same sentence, a very specific image likely comes to mind.
For years now, President Donald Trump has been showing off a signature dance move at events and campaign rallies, jerking his bent arms and clenched fists forward and backward, often to the sound of the Village People’s “YMCA.”
The dance is a regular feature when he’s onstage — so much so that it has become part of his signature brand, experts told HuffPost.
“It’s typically the same exact song and it’s the same exact set of moves, and he’s typically doing it when he’s wearing the blue suit, the white shirt and the red tie, so it’s part of his brand,” said Patti Wood, a body language expert and author of “Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma.” “One of the reasons it is so interesting to observe is that we know exactly what he’s going to do, and yet we look at it every time [and try] to understand.”
This “very on brand for him” move is even a “visual version” of his speech patterns, said Denise Dudley, a clinical psychologist and behavioral expert. “If we think about it a certain way, he dances like he talks,” Dudley said. “It’s super repetitive, it’s really simple. I mean, it’s not complicated at all.”
The clenched fists show dominance and aggression, experts say.
A signature part of Trump’s dance is his clenched fists. Experts say clenched fists are highly symbolic — and highly intimidating.
“When we see somebody with their hands in fists, it creates tension in our central nervous system,” Wood explained.
“Those balled-up fists … the gestures are super dominance-oriented, they’re aggressive,” Dudley said.
When we see a fist, our instincts also tell us that it’s a weapon, Wood noted, “and so we stay a little bit on edge.” The fists metaphorically mean “fight,” Wood added, “but also say this is a battle, or I’m fighting, or I’m cool, alpha.”
Tight fists are also the opposite of the joy, spontaneity and openness that you expect to see when someone is dancing.
“You want your hands to be open so that they look inviting and relaxed, and so you can be emotionally expressive … so even within his ‘dance,’ he’s still communicating his force and his control and his power,” Dudley said. “It’s just a power move to have clenched fists like that, it’s like a victory gesture rather than social dancing.”
It’s also a form of “crowd signaling.”
“His dancing isn’t so much dancing as it is crowd signaling,” Dudley said, who explained that crowd signaling occurs when humans “want to mirror things … we want to mirror gestures, we often mirror vocal patterns and posture and rhythms and movement and such.”
This isn’t exclusive to politicians; it also happens at sporting events when folks all stand up to cheer or do the wave, she noted.
“That crowd signaling is a way that a leader can get people to start doing what it is they’re doing,” Dudley said.
And the “Trump dance,” with its fists and simple arm movements, is very easy to mimic, Dudley noted. “All of his MAGA people, his constituents, they can all do that same thing. I just really see this as another way that he is signaling the crowds to ‘do what I do.’”
Illustration: HuffPost; Photo: Getty Images
His feet don’t move, which is not normal during a dance onstage, experts say.
“The feet are the most honest part of the body, so that’s [what] gives you the greatest revelation,” Wood said.
It’s often thought that feet pointed away from someone display disinterest in the conversation, and feet pointed toward someone show interest and even attraction.
Typically, when people dance, their feet move back and forth or side to side. But that isn’t the case with Trump’s dancing, Wood said. “He might lean to the left or lean to the right, but he’s not picking up his feet, he’s not moving through space, he’s not moving to the front of the stage or moving down to the side of the stage.”
“A performer would want to either look to different parts of the audience or move to the front of the stage or move side to side to get more of the energy, give more of their energy,” Wood continued.
Experts say his facial expressions are notable as well.
Think about the last time you went dancing with friends or danced with your partner at a wedding. You were probably smiling as you moved around — and this is very normal, expected behavior.
When Trump dances, though, he often has a frown or grimace on his face, Wood said, with his lips tightly held together.
“He’s often grimacing as if he’s exerting enormous amounts of effort just to do this, as if he knows he has to,” Wood noted.
“Occasionally he’ll also kind of smirk,” said Wood, before adding that this smirk may be an effort to “look cool” as he dances or pretend he’s not enjoying it. “So, that could be it, but because the brows go down more, the eyes go clenched in, it just appears that he’s doing this with extreme effort and he doesn’t feel joyful about it.”
Dudley added that Trump is squinting, which can be a victory gesture or a dominant type of expression.
To really figure out how Trump’s dance feels emotionally, Wood said she recommends that people get up and try it themselves.
“Sometimes, when I’m trying to get people to understand somebody’s non-verbal behavior, I say, ‘Well, do that movement … and see how you feel in your body to figure out that person or figure out how they’re feeling,’” Wood said.
Folks who try to do this dance will feel the negativity, unease and effort it takes, instead of the freed emotions that normally come with dance, Wood said.
While one dance can never offer a complete look into Trump’s psyche, how he moves to a specific song over and over again does offer a peek.
“Our body language reflects our emotional state, but the opposite is also true,” Wood explained.
“We crave to understand him, to try to figure him out,” Wood added.
