I took ballet classes as a kid, just like every other fairly privileged girl. I recall being slightly older than my classmates, and therefore taller, slightly more awkward, and definitely alienated. I loved the class-I had no potential or aspirations to be a ballerina (as a kid I thought I wanted to be a comedian, and worshipped Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.) Being in that group environment, with the warbly strains of some classical melody piping into the studio, I could transport myself away from my vocabulary quizzes, my chores, my bullies and unmade bed. Dancing was like being in a trance, and until I became so sick that I had to drop out of class, I was basking in my dancer's high.
I abandoned dance, and most athletics as well, in my teenage angst and aversion to competition and anything organized. It was around this time (early high school...um, the very early 90s) when I met my best friend Ginny. She had two older sisters who carried her into the world of downtown clubs and mix-tapes and grunge and all those mysterious and cool scenes we were starting to dream about. Because of Ginny's access to cool, and because of my friendship with her, we started to "go out dancing." I write that in quotations, because going out dancing is never just that. It is always a mish-mash of preparation, the thrill of pulling up to the club and hearing a song you recognize, of watching the seasoned dancers and finding your own moves, of slowly integrating yourself into this new community. The club we went to was called "Visage" and it hosted an all ages night (we were only 14-15!) The DJ's were spinning music from the 1980s to full effect, and that's where I was introduced to The Smiths, New Order, Depeche Mode, and on and on and on. Orlando had a a particularly interesting dance scene; I joke now about how it was so goth, and it was, but there was a mix of rave, trance, new wave in there too. It wasn't enough just to stand on the floor and shuffle your feet around-you had to embody the music somehow. Yes, I did learn from a lot of goth/industrial dancers. There was a lot of twirling and bowing and kicking and fake praying and all that (not by me-I could never fully commit to goth. I think my own dancing inspiration is triangulated somewhere between a Muppet, Saturday Night Fever, and Twyla Tharp.) It was time when you could smoke indoors, and people were always dancing with a lit cigarette, so you always had to watch out for enthusiastic gesturers. I lived to go dancing; Ginny had found a surrogate for the ballet classes of my youth, except with better music (arguably) and only optional leotards.
By the time I was in college, I was still seeking out dance nights. I was living in Columbus, Ohio, which surprised me with it's small yet concentrated community of artists and music. I would go to one club in particular, and dance until my shirt was sticking and my hair was plastered with sweat. The whole vibe of the place reminded me of Visage, and the spell was only broken when 2 am rolled around and the abruptly turned on the house lights and told us to GET OUT. That was around the time when I learned about the disenchantment of appearances and the glamour of the dance floor. Nobody was ever as attractive as when the house lights came on, myself most of all. After college, I went back to Orlando and Ginny and I were really hitting our boogie stride. In my memory, this was the era of Barbarella (now called the Independent Bar) and the crystallization of our dance club identities.
We would go 2 nights a week; I was nursing a difficult and complicated break-up and Ginny was declaring her independence from her (then) husband, so we both really needed an escape. We would get there early to secure a booth for the night, and over time we got familiar with the door guys, the bartenders, and the regulars. There was the tall, adorable, possibly gay guy who really threw himself into the music, the squat, aging goth chick who always looked like she was auditioning for Macbeth when she danced, the middle aged man who looked like he got lost on his way to a carpet sales convention and had one move only (that consisted of stepping from one foot to the other, always in the same rhythm, regardless of what song was playing.) We eventually made friends with some of them, and I particularly enjoyed crushing on the cute boys that knew what to do with their feet. I never pursued the crushes, because the idea was always better than the reality.
I eventually moved to Minneapolis, and lost my dance nights. There didn't seem to be any club that played the right music, drew the right people-everything seemed like prime meat-market opportunity. Since I wasn't going dancing to get groped, I had nowhere to go. Only in the past year have I found a good dance night, and someone to go with. I've tried going to Too Much Love, but it seemed like it was stuffed with these young kids who had never gone out dancing before, and didn't know what to do: they either just stood there, preening in the center of the floor, or they overcompensated and danced beyond capacity (undoubtedly after too many Sparks.) There was a lack of understanding of the dynamics and flow of the dance floor, and these kids seemed more interested in being seen than moving. The current dance situation seems to embody both the greatness of my dancing youth and the irritation of a current lack of experience. There are people who literally plow their way into the middle of the dance floor and then just stand there. Is it stage fright? Temporary parylization? Bad manners? There are people who get too drunk and fall over, people who keep their coats on all night, people who dance with their hands in their pockets and therefore leave their elbows out for others to bump into. There seem to be an unusually high concentration of men who like to make a running commentary of how my friend and I dance. We've been dubbed as interpretive dancers and choreographed maniacs. Granted, we can get a little over the top, but it's out of a love of the situation, and a desire to milk that night for all it's worth.
What I don't understand is the kind of posessiveness of the floor that seems to exist nowadays. That, and the tardiness of some dancers to the contemporary dance experience. My best example: Pulp's "Disco 2000" comes on and a herd of boys in their pseudo-NYC-Interpol-come-lately-quasi-dandified gear rush the floor like they are at a soccer match and basically thrash around pumping their fists into the air. NOBODY else can dance when this is happening, and it seem intentional, but it also seems a bit behind the times. I mean, that song, while totally danceable and fun, is old news. So why the mosh pit? Is it because these guys are relatively young, and are still freaking out on their dance high too? What about the girls who don't ever dance a step, but keep a hawkish eye out for every other girl on the dancefloor? It crushes the joy of the night, and getting your foot impaled by someone's stiletto (that they can't dance in) gets tiring. There are a few throwbacks to what I'm reluctant to dub the "old days" but I guess it's really true. Certain dancers who know how much space they should take up, how to really get into the song, and how to do it with style.
