This article originally appeared on news.com.au and is published here with permission.

Clubbers keen to prove your worth on the nightclub scene, feel free to wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care — but only to a point, if you want to perfect those sexy dance moves.

Otherwise you are likely to scare off any potential partners.

A groundbreaking study has discovered what the sexiest dance moves are ... and twerking isn’t on the list.

Older night clubbers, who many believe should be at home on the couch, please take note: the lawnmower, the sprinkler and spaghetti arms aren’t on the list either.

The study by researchers at Northumbria University,and published in Scientific Reports, focused on female dancers to reveal what attracts us to those pulling the moves on the dance floor.

The researchers found the most attractive dance moves were swinging hips, thumping thighs and swinging arms, but never, never madly out of control.

You really can have too much of a good thing.

Those judged the best performers danced with wide swings of the hips, asymmetric leg movements — where each limb moves independently of the other — coupled with moderate amounts of asymetrical arm movements.

“Both male and female raters judged that more attractive dances contained greater arm movement and hip swing, and more asymmetric thigh movements,” the authors of the study wrote.

The moves of a sexy dancer

Watch example here.

“Dances that contained some thigh movement, and some asymmetric arm movements were rated more attractive than dances that contained high or low quantities of these movements.

“In our sample, we found that the degree of movement was important; the highest rated dances demonstrated intermediate rather than low or high levels of asymmetric arm movement.

“Both of these options might indicate poor motor control.

“Indeed, in extreme cases, hypokinesia can indicate serious medical conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, just as hyperkinesia can indicate Huntington’s disease or Tourette’s syndrome.

The moves of a no-so-sexy dancer

Watch example here.

“Thus to be attractive, the quantity of movement has to fall within a specific window.”

The scientists recorded the dance moves of 39 heterosexual women from 18-30, who were not professional dancers, as they rocked out to a drumbeat from a Robbie Williams’ song.

The researchers used digital dance markers that transformed the participants into 3D digital avatars in order to remove biases related to physical attraction, weight and height.

“Hip swing is a trait that identifies female movement, and the ability to move limbs asymmetrically may attest to well-developed motor control, so long as this limb independence does not verge into uncontrolled pathological movement,” the authors of the study wrote.

The study pooled reactions from 200 ‘raters’ who ranked dancers on a scale of 1-7 from 15 seconds of footage of each dancer.

Different combinations can work, such as combining less hip swinging with more asymetrical leg movements or bigger hip swings but less asymetrical leg movement.

The researchers believe that the wide swinging of the hips is appealing sexually because it is strong sign of fertility, co-author of the study Associate Professor Nick Neave said.

“Dance is strongly influenced by culture, so there may be some cultural differences in specific movements or gestures.”

However, he says, people generally tend to agree on who’s a good dancer and who’s a bad dancer.

“So the basic idea that dance moves are able to convey honest information about the reproductive qualities of the dancer in question appears sound.”