Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor

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All of these powerful dancefloors [in the book] happened from the street up,” Warren says. ​ “It was often made by people who were living in aversion of the state that did not operate in their interests. Grassroots creativity is always present. We need amuch, much bigger appreciation of the way that communities of colour built post-war culture, because it’s absolutely true in every single way when it comes to music.” There’s a monthly club party I go to in Berlin with the promo slogan “nothing matters when we’re dancing”. Contrary to what you’d expect, its demographic is not students and twentysomethings: it’s mainly thirty-plus and mixed in gender, occupation and race. In Berlin the dance floor’s been a democratiser since the Berlin Wall came down; it’s often said that it was on dance floors that German reunification first happened. She talks to dance historian Toni Basil (whose CV includes choreographing the video for Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime) and hip-hop dancer Henry Link. She meets Dr Peter Michael Nielsen, whose office has “a bass chair which he helped invent because he believes applied bass can improve the symptoms of a number of ailments”. She cites scholars like Edwin Denby, who discusses ballet’s origins in the classical world, and Egil Bakka, a professor emeritus of dance studies who says that, at the evolutionary level, interaction is dance’s “core value”. I remember when my daughter was about six, seven, this is pre-TikTok, but ‘Gangnam Style’ was the thing, and that was the first communal craze of her dancing life, and it was so great to see her and all her friends suddenly just want to do this one thing together. I don’t see TikTok as negative, I just think it’s quite a different thing, because it’s talking about precision. And emulating. But you’re right. It’s just like watching Soul Train or Top of the Pops, or all those things that everyone’s always done.

Choose the style of dance that you want to learn. There are so many different types of dance which means that there is bound to be a style that suits you. Look at dance books, watch dance videos online, or see dancers perform to find a style that you want to focus on. Some popular types of dance include ballet, jazz, contemporary, ballroom, and hip hop. [1] X Research source You use these metaphors a lot in the book, that there are those moments where you’re so in the dance that you feel you’re creating the music rather than responding to it. Swedish researchers studied more than 100 teenage girls who were struggling with issues such as depression and anxiety. Half of the girls attended weekly dance classes, while the other half didn’t. The results? Girls who participated in dance classes improved their mental health and reported a boost in their mood. These positive effects lasted up to eight months after the dance classes ended. Researchers concluded dance can result in increased self-esteem for participants and potentially contribute to sustained new healthy habits. So could you do a blind taste test – like a wine tasting – from the way people dance? Could you see what cultural input they’ve had over their lifetime? There are countless books on nightlife out there – ones that summon images of sweaty, swaying bodies in illegal raves, trace the impactful origins of techno in Detroit, and make Berlin’s underground club scene sound like ahardcore orgy (not so far off, to be fair) – but Warren’s second book places direct emphasis on movement. It’s not all about clubs; it’s about dancing as aprimal need.At a conference on folk dance, Warren learns how, in pre-industrial times, dance was more common and spontaneous than it is now. Modernity has alienated us from ourselves. Men weren’t always coy about throwing shapes in public; it’s a culturally determined hang-up that can, of course, magically dissolve after a few drinks. The author sketches out a case that “it is still considered broadly unbecoming for ‘persons of prominence’ to dance”, and quotes a British academic, Caspar Melville, who says that resisting dancing is “the burden of the powerful”. A refusal to dance sends a message that “I have mastered my body and my base nature,” Mr Melville suggests. This explains why the privileged can be awkward dancers, Ms Warren adds. Mirror the movements of the instructor in the dance video. Face the dance instructor in the video and pretend that you are the mirror image of the instructor’s movements. Watch the instructor at all times and try to keep up with all of the steps. [8] X Expert Source Yolanda Thomas Emma Warren’s ‘Dance your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor’ — our Book of the Month for March — is an ode to the power and necessity of movement, writes Tara Joshi.

I am often an enthusiastic presence on a dance floor. There are photographs and videos of me as a chubby toddler wriggling to my parents’ Bollywood tapes, I did standard sparkly childhood ballet, I was a huge fan of making up dubious choreographed routines at school discos; and, even now, I love being in the club with the bass reverberating in my chest, laughing with friends as they catch wines in a humid crowd at carnival, or else dancing alone, swaying my hips in the company of my reflection in my bedroom mirror. Use italics (lyric) and bold (lyric) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part She also says the association of dance culture and wantonness is why clubs are often in the cross-hairs of the authorities. The dance-lovers she writes about are almost always at risk of losing places to boogie. Some dancers are siloed due to prejudice: the party in Mr McQueen’s film takes place in a house because there are few spaces for such a gathering. Do you think you could read someone’s history? I mean, from watching someone dance? Could you do some detective work? How much could you tell about a person?Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, in ’80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. Over the last 10 years, the UK has suffered a huge cultural loss. To some extent, it is part of the great shrinking of shared and collective space, which takes in everything from pubs and bars to community centres and libraries. But this particular change stands alone: a striking example of how something that was once thriving and important can hit the skids, and precious few people in positions of power and influence will even notice.

It’s all stories and it has that pagan thing going for it. Just the fact that it’s so old makes it quite interesting. Among young’uns “simple dance moves such as swinging arms or stepping from side to side drew children together emotionally, with participants reporting that afterwards they felt closer to the groups they’d danced with”, But as in many other areas, our creative impulse in dance is stymied by the adult mania for competition. “Dance classes for tots often involve examination, as if learning to dance, even for fun, and even if you’re only five years old, requires the imposition of quality control,” Warren says. The book's cover features an iconic image taken by Georgina Cook, aka dubstep scene photographer Drumz Of The South, at an edition of FWD>> at London club Plastic People in 2006. When it comes to the dancefloor, its greatest strength is bringing people together. It’s something we missed during the pandemic, when there was genuine fear that clubs would never open again, or that gigs were arelic of the past. It’s arelease from the 9 – 5, aplace where lovers meet for the first time, where sartorial styles are invented, where new friendships are formed and where youth take their first steps into adulthood.Emma Warren’s Dance Your Way Home is a beautiful and timely defence of dancing. Whether it’s at home or with friends, professionally or for fun, dance is one of our most natural outlets for creativity and connection. Warren’s book focuses on dance in community and culture. Pose treats with respect, pathos and love both the glamour of the ballroom and the guts of the Aids crisis, transphobia, sexism and racism. It’s a charismatic dance-off between appearance and reality, in which both sides are equally matched. Pray Tell might say “the category is … paramount realness!” The pose, in other words, is the realness.