This is actually a great question, but it doesn’t have one answer.

Usually people learn their first “dancing” at home from their parents or siblings, or maybe even at school at dances. Most of these are just simple movement to music, like a slow dance, or just a step back and forth kinda thing.

Usually people then pick up some sort of “moves” by seeing other people do them, often in popular media like tv shows, movies, music videos, etc.

This is where most people stop.

Then there’s the people who want to DANCE. And a lot of those go to dance studios or join a dance club as kids or youth, or even as an adult, and learn both different moves and full choreography for entire songs where there’s intentional patterns of moves in series.

Like most things these days, you can also do that alone with some youtube videos in your bedroom. If they need more space, they may go practice outside. Pick a move, learn it, pick another move, learn it. String them together into your own choreography, or copy the choreography from a video you found.

As you get a bit into the dance scene and are confident enough to do it in front of others, there start to be times and places you can go to show off. I’m not just talking about competitions, but even parties hosted just to cater to dancers. Often with specific music types for a specific type of dancing.

Dancing is awesome. I never got very good at it, but it’s very healthy.