I danced with an old man last night. I have no idea who he is, and I’m not using ‘old’ either euphemistically or judgementally. As a purely objective assessment he’d have a good ten or more years on me, and I’m no spring chicken. Someone used the horrible expression ‘on the pull’. If he was, well, good luck to him and I admire his optimism. More importantly though, whatever his thinking, he was sweet and gentlemanly – and he was on his feet, alone, and dancing.
And so was I.
As was the female friend that I’d gone disco’ing with.
As were most of the people on the floor. There were a few couples actually dancing with each other, but more people dancing in loose groups, or shifting pairings, or simply alone.
My friend and I talked in those rare moments where we were both sitting one out, about whether we’d have gone there alone. Answer: probably not. On further reflection though: why not? We’d talked a lot over dinner in the pub, but once we hit the venue it was all about the dance – and we dance differently and we like different music.
It’s not like we danced with each other.
Unless maybe you count the first three numbers when we were the only two on the floor – but even then, we weren’t ‘together’ – we were simply in the same space. We were dancing to the music, and the music meant something different to each of us. We were dancing alone, in our own little worlds, and that’s what we did for the rest of the night. It’s what I’ve done for years.
That is the joy of the old-fashioned disco.
By the way, this really was an old-fashioned disco. Real people playing real 45’s on actual turntables. Tables round the edges. No drinks on the dance floor. People dressed up to the nines. People dressed the way they did back then. People looking like they’d just walked in off the beach. And everything in between. People getting up to dance with joy written all over their body. This wasn’t about ‘being seen’. This was all about the music and the dance.
In a way it is also about learning how to be alone with other people. I’m an introvert and yet I love being on the dance floor. The fact that it’s empty never stops me. I’ve only recently worked out that it’s because dancing is easier than talking to people.
To quote the legendary Jim Steinman “You don't say nothing, but your body really knows how to speak.”
Disco-dancing, free-dancing, 5-rhythms, ecstatic, whatever informal form of dancing we get ourselves into, we do it alone in community. There is something special in that construct: alone, in community.
It’s why writing groups flourish. We sit together and write, and only share what we want to share. It’s private and public at the same time. Dance is not so far removed from writing, in the sense that it is personal, and private, and meaningful, and only as public as you are willing to make it – and when it is done ‘in community’ – which for the sake of last night means a bunch of (mostly) older people who remember the seventies music fondly – then it is ultimately just about having fun.
Remember that? Fun?
I’m reminded of that old Robert Plant throwaway line: “Does anybody remember laughter?” If you spend too much time in the darker reaches of current affairs or social media then you might have forgotten. You might have forgotten a certain kind of laughter, not the cynical poking fun at people, not the manipulative chortles of unprincipled politicians, but the pure joyful laughter of childhood, the thrill of silliness. If you’ve done that, you’ve probably also forgotten what an absolute unbounded joy it is to step onto a dancefloor with no rules.
Your body doesn't just know how to speak, it knows how to giggle, to laugh, to bubble its joy to the surface.
I’ve always wanted to be able to dance.
In the accepted sense of what it means to be able to dance: I can’t. I’m not co-ordinated enough. My sense of rhythm can be a bit wayward. Or maybe I just never had the patience to learn. What bliss then to grow up in the age of disco when, suddenly, frankly, everyone could dance. The definition of ‘dance’ changed. More accurately, it reverted. After the centuries of formalising ‘the dance’, disco more than any other form freed dance back to its ancestral roots of being just one person and the music. Nothing in between.
Don’t get me wrong: I would still love to be able to ‘actually, properly’ dance. I’d love to know how
to do the steps and the routines that bring you into co-creation and direct expression with another human being. I’d love to have the energy to jive. I’d love to go to a ceilidh and know exactly how to strip the willow. I want to have the passion and control of flamenco and tango, the sensuality of salsa, the flair of a waltz, the sass of jazz.
Be honest: I’d actually be dead-chuffed if I could get a Zumba routine down pat, without having to look over my shoulder for clues as to the next move.
But it doesn’t matter, because there is disco and soul and rock music – and there are still people willing to play it – and more importantly people willing to get up and dance to it.
I’m one of them.
When I was young, back in the aforementioned seventies, my Mam said something that has stayed with me all these years, something along the lines of “whatever you think about the clothes and the hair, they can dance without having to wait for a partner.” She got it.
As we moved out of the seventies into the early eighties, the poor woman had all sorts of concerns about the dives I was frequenting, the sort of music I was listening to, the perfume I saturated myself in, especially after I’d deserted soul and disco for rock music. The hippy chic dress sense didn’t help. Then every so often I’d throw a curve ball and go out in a 1940s pencil skirt and stilettoes. She didn’t necessarily know that I was still going to The Bowes, and would step out of the shoes to dance on a sticky floor to 1960s psychedelia, among other things. All the time though, she never stood in my way. All the while she repeated her mantra of how good it was to be able to simply dance.
I remember Saturday nights at home in the late seventies. The word ‘rave’ took on a different connotation later, but back then, in my mid-teens, we used the expression “a rave up”. A ‘rave up’ was what might happen on a Saturday night when my parents and their friends would come back to ours – or to theirs – wherever the kids had been left for the evening – and have another drink or two, and put on the music. Back then licensing hours in our neck of the woods stopped at 10.30pm. They weren’t rolling in at three in the morning, the way I would be doing not so very many years later. They would come back, pour another drink, put the music on – and get up and dance. I remember dancing to Bill Haley and the Comets, to Elvis Presley, to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, to Sweet and Slade, to things I’d listened to on Top of the Pops, things from movies, things I’d only ever heard on Mam’s radiogram. I still have some of those tunes on LPs.
It was dancing with partners. It was dancing alone. It was show-off dancing. It was don’t-look-at-me dancing. Above all it was joyful. And that is where I learnt to dance, in those front rooms among friends and family. That was where I learned that dancing is not about having a partner or knowing the steps and the routine. Dancing is about stepping into the music, removing everything that stands between you and it.
I should add that I’m using the term ‘music’ loosely, because most often for me it’s about ‘the song’ – the music AND the words…the story. I’m not a musician; I’m a wordsmith. I can only get part of the emotion and meaning from the music itself; I need the words to complete the picture. Even when the words don’t make any sense at all.
My tastes in music mutated over the years – they’re still eclectic – and my ability to dance hasn’t improved, but my joy in it remains.
Many years ago, at a works Christmas do, someone said to me that they admired my ability to walk out onto an empty dance floor. Most people are really nervous about getting up, but it’s like you just don’t care, he said.
Correct! I don’t care.
What you think of my moves is your problem. What I do, is between me and the music. I’m not a performer. I’m a dancer, in the purest expression of that word. I dance for myself. I dance to connect with the essence of a song. At its best I understand the song, but even when I don’t, I get to move my body – which in itself is a pleasure and privilege.
Not everyone can, physically, do this. Not everyone, emotionally, wants to do this. That's also ok.
Clive was not a dancer. As a musician, primarily a drummer, he already had his own primal connection to music, but he knew how much being on a dancefloor meant to me and he often said how much he enjoyed watching me, just because it was me being me out there. Totally free.
There is something about watching someone having a really good time.
I think there’s something even more about being the one having that good time, because what happens when you do, is that you stop thinking.
Last night, I didn’t see anyone who was not having a good time. I didn’t spot anyone who wasn’t on the dance floor at some point during the evening. Most people spent more time on their feet than in their seats…and that really took me back…
…back to the holiday camps, back to the summer discos at the Rec, back to The Bowes, back to watching “Happy Days” on Friday nights, back to a time when I could not imagine being this old and still jumping up to David Bowie or Donna Summer, with a grin on my face and bounce in my feet.
If you haven’t been dancing lately – go – and let yourself go!
And if I ever stop, you will probably have my permission to disconnect the machines.
~
