Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor

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For the last week, I have been immersed in a brilliant new book called Dance Your Way Home, by the music and culture writer Emma Warren, which throws all this into sharp relief. Weaving together memoir and social history, it explores dancing through stories that include her memories of 1980s school discos, moral panics in 1930s Ireland, and the grime and dubstep milieus of London in the early 21st century. The writing is often subtly political, but what really burns through is a sense of dancing not just being redemptive and restorative, but an underrated means of communication. 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. 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. Warren is for the most part deft and light in her writing style. You can feel the giddy feet bouncing off wooden floors, the sly breeze of the Electric Slide (which, she correctly surmises, a generation of people – myself included – have never known as anything but the Candy Dance), the tenderness of a grandfather on his deathbed asking his granddaughter to dance while he passes, the joy of Warren and some peers encouraging schoolchildren in a conga line. And like the dancers – of whom you are now one – you feel compelled, perhaps propelled, to action with each history you read.

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, 'Dance Your Way Home' is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor – wherever and whenever it may be – that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move." Just over 30 years ago, that inclusive vision was pushed into the cultural mainstream by the upsurge known as acid house, which decoupled dancing and clubs from the cliches that still dominate some people’s understanding of them – drinking, “pulling”, fighting – and was all about shared transcendence and self-discovery. “I was in jeans and T-shirt, recognising how my body liked to move, how it could stretch and contract on its own terms without having to consider how this affected my status as it related to being fanciable, as it had at school,” Warren says. “I was there to dance, and I would dance for hours and hours.” This was circa 1990. By 1994, she points out, there were more than 200 million separate admissions to UK nightclubs, which outstripped those for sport, cinemagoing and the other remaining “live arts”. In that context, what has happened since seems even more tragic. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.The dancefloor can be aplace in which people who have different life experiences, who walk through the world in away that brings different responses from the state, can have acommunal experience,” Warren says.

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. A landmark social history of the dancefloor that gets to the heart of what it is that makes us move. So it is that a whole chunk of our shared culture is falling away. And as takings drop, premises close and people lose their jobs, we are losing something every bit as precious: spaces where people can gather to dance. This is a profoundly human pastime that we have indulged in for as long as our species has been around, but it is now in danger of being pushed to the social margins. 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.

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You uncovered a few DJs with professional dance pasts. I didn’t realise that Fabio had actually been a pro dancer. And Gerald. 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.”

When Blanca finds out she is HIV-positive, she tells ballroom MC, Pray Tell, “At least now something in my life is for sure.” He replies, “You ain’t dead yet.” As someone who has been on the dance floor for decades, Iwas in agood position to be able to share some of the things that those of us that have spent some time at the dance truly know and believe,” she says. ​ “We know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.” The stories of spaces and dances and culture are all fed through her bones and the bones of others into the dancefloor to dance our culture meeting familiar names and faces along the way. We meet Tony Basil, Winston Hazel, Ron Trent and Ade Fakile (founder of London’s seminal space Plastic People) and many more. We get an understanding on what spaces need to make the dance happen and much of the time the requirement is people with stories to tell through their movements.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. I’ve sometimes found myself on a dance floor where I’m like, I like this music. But it’s just too fast for me – and that’s a physical feeling. The other thing is what I call the noodle factor. My body prefers the groove, it likes something cyclical. Going to a drum and bass night, I might love the music, love the sonics. But there’s something that stops me really enjoying the movement, because it’s too surprising. Those rhythms are just a little bit too ungroovy, it’s the high surprise factor or something. Drum and bass, I would always dance the half speed. And then I’d feel like I’m not putting enough energy into it. I would definitely argue that there’s some sort of inbuilt motor. I don’t know if it’s biological or learnt. That’s the big question, isn’t it? I'll say this early, Emma Warren’s ‘Dance Your Way Home – A Journey Through The Dancefloor’ is just brilliant. A thoroughly informative but also entertaining read pulling the spine or threads of her life into one rich story Among age groups who would once have been on the cusp of getting into clubbing, there is also increasing evidence of a tendency to social withdrawal and introversion. Recent research from the US suggests that an increasing share of teenagers meet up with friends less than once a month. In a recent Prince’s Trust survey, 40% of young people in the UK reported being worried about socialising with others. On top of the personal anxieties sown online, Covid left a huge legacy of fears of infection, and a general sense that mixing with others risked harm and trouble. When people do get together, moreover, the possibilities of basic interaction sometimes come second to screentime. The observation of one London youth worker, reported last year in a Guardian news story, speaks volumes: “There are great hugs and shrieks when they get together, but then everyone goes on their phone.” The idea for the book, called 'Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor', emerged after Warren focused on some specific lines from her last book, 'Make Some Space', which was about the community around London venue Total Refreshment Centre. The lines, which Warren said "a few people honed in on" was that "dancing in the dark is a human need, that we've been doing this forever, and that it's a kind of medicine".

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.Teens aren’t the only ones who can dance their way to better mental health. Senior citizens (and adults of all ages) can reap the benefits too. A small group of seniors, ages 65-91, was studied in North Dakota. After taking 12 weeks of Zumba (a dance fitness class), the seniors reported improved moods and cognitive skills- not to mention increased strength and agility. UK music journalist and writer Emma Warren has penned a new book that looks at the history of why we dance. 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. 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. 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.