student asking question

Is there any difference in nuance between "doing that dancing" and "doing that dance"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

The difference would be that usually a "dance" would refer to a specific dance. For example the salsa or flamenco. Whereas the word "dancing" means the general activity. Since he is not doing a specific type of dance, he's kind of just moving around, the interviewer chose to say "that dancing". However many people also use dance non-specifically so, depending on where you are, "that dance" would also be accepted in this sentence structure. This is one of those differences that are affected by context and region. Ex: Do you want to go dancing? Ex: Do you want to go dance? In the UK both if the above examples would be acceptable forms, the second being more informal.

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