Avoiding Atrophy: Review - Just Dance 2014 (Spoiler Alert: I love it)

I kind of don't even know how to express how pumped I am for the things that are about to happen in this post, so I'm just going to jump right in. No cat GIFs or anything.

My husband, Daniel, and I recently added Just Dance 2014 to our short list of video games! For those of you unfamiliar with the Just Dance video game series, basically, it's a rhythm/dancing game that combines some sick choreography (sick in the positive sense, by the way) with an eclectic mix of contemporary music and some classics (everything from Applause by Lady Gaga to the Flashdance theme song). We play it on our Kinect for Xbox 360, but it's also available for Nintendo Wii, and anyway, it's kind of revolutionized our lives forever. Just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here, here's the official launch trailer:

The first time we really gave this game a spin was on Halloween with a few friends. As the trailer depicts perfectly, you can play Just Dance with multiple people at the same time, which makes for amazing photo ops such as the following:

Your eyes do not deceive you. That is Harry Potter, a piñata, Kermit the frog, and someone not dressed up (and therefore unworthy of being mentioned) ALL loving their life playing Just Dance. I remember distinctly that we were dancing to "Prince Ali" from Aladdin. I was dancing as the Jafar character which accounts for the wickedness in my eyes.

It was a blast of a night, and I still find myself laughing about these grown men all dancing to the Ghostbusters theme song.

It's seriously one of the song selections! And someone gets to dance as Slimer. Amazing.

We all agreed that seriously anyone can play this game. Whether you are Beyonce...

Via

or James Van Der Beek...

Via funnyordie.com

...you're going to be just fine. And you don't have to be a gamer either. This game is very intuitive. You'll get the hang of it in no time.

So yeah, it's a no-brainer. Just Dance is easily the world's best party-starter, but it's also legitimately the most fun workout of your life. I use the "Just Sweat" function of the game, which sounds like it would be a little awkward....you know, just me dancing alone in my living room...but no, it's awesome. It strings together a bunch of songs for the duration of 10, 20, 40, or 60 minutes. I'm not a totally hopeless case when it comes to physical fitness, and this game honestly leaves me embarrassingly winded. I straight up love it.

But my absolute favorite thing about Just Dance is the joy it brings to our marriage.

I love this quote by Samuel Beckett that says, "Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order." In marriage, or dating, or any seasoned relationship, we are compelled to do a lot of thinking, and it's easy for us to get bogged down in details. Is the rent due? Can you meet me there at 5:30? Did you rinse your plate? -- All of that boring junk has the ability to pile up and make life feel less special.

Dancing is the opposite of that. It's this mostly-foolish, sometimes-impressive, phenomenal expression of freedom. Silly as it sounds, playing this game and just having all-out-fun in our own home has been a real gift to us. We're just playing like kids, and of course we're still paying our rent on time, but these little dance dates just make life feel a bit more magical. Yeah, I said it. MAGICAL.

Anyway, as a real expression of freedom, please enjoy this video of our best Just Dance moments. Hopefully, it will inspire you to either get this game and revolutionize your life, or at least it will serve as my audition tape for Juilliard.

If you want to learn more about Just Dance 2014, you can check out the game's website (http://clvr.li/15JzNvu) and also visit Ubisoft's blog (http://clvr.li/1fdPVJ0). And if you're ready to get your hands on the glory that is this game, you can head to Amazon.com or Gamestop.com.

So let's see, today we've talked about dancing, joy, romance, and living life to the fullest. On that note, I think I will leave you with the following GIF (my absolute favorite), which perfectly encapsulates all of those things.