A new study by evolutionary biologists at Northumbria University and the University of Gottingen (United Kingdom) sought to better understand the art of dance, the Washington Post reported. Though it's easy to distinguish a good dancer from a bad one, it's not always easy to articulate exactly why. Perhaps because women are typically more comfortable on the dance floor, the study only analyzed how they perceived the abilities of men.

In order to control for other factors that might influence one's judgment of another's dancing skills -- such as attractiveness, dress, status -- researchers created avatars of each participant's performance, in which they were asked to move to a drum beat. The avatars were completely white and indistinguishable from the next.

After collecting a large enough sample, researchers showed them to 30 women, who rated each performance.

Researchers were able to analyze the results in such a way as to separate the body parts women most preferred and the relative speed at which they preferred them to move. Not surprisingly, most of the body was deemed important -- except the arms. Researchers didn't find any correlation between arm movements and dancing ability. For the legs, it was about speed; faster bends and twists tended to rate higher. For the central body, including the neck, head, and torso, it was more about the variety of movements.

Strangely, rapid movements of the left leg were more weakly correlated with dancing ability than movements of the right leg, likely because 85 percent or so of the population is right-handed.

As bio-evolutionary scientists, the researchers wondered if preferred movements could correspond to "honest signals of traits such as health, fitness, genetic quality and developmental history" since "dancing ability, particularly that of men, may serve as a signal of mate quality."

More research - as well as research seeking the opinions of men on women dancing - is needed before such connections can be made.

For one of the best street dancers in the world, see below. His leg movements are particularly impressive.