Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor

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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. 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, ’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. This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens... 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.” Emma also makes strong stands against injustice, both in the removal of spaces and to people in general (see the writing in the book on David Emmanuel aka Smiley Culture). She is cautious to not stand where her shadow hasn't been so uses Lewisham at one point, home borough to Emma, to tell the story of reggae and reggae dance in the area and London's wider whole.

This is not just a book for devoted clubbers and professional dancers: Warren also explores the importance of dancing round the living room as a new parent, taking up space as a middle-aged woman and making sense of dyspraxia through movement. The depth of research is fascinating, but it’s written by a fan as much as an expert. Statistics and laws are bolstered by Warren’s own feelings and stories, offering a warmth and authenticity that could only be achieved by someone who has spent many hours on various dancefloors. 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, '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. 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. Her words hit home. I went along and immediately loved it. The teacher was funny and accomplished, and Simone, the accompanist, improvised beats on his MPC Live, altering the music to suit our needs and abilities. I didn’t need to exaggerate the emotional content of my moves, as you might imagine in a comic version of the class, in which we’d open like flowers or spill about like rain. My emotional state became very clear to me as I moved, just as emotion is visible in hunched shoulders or an open chest. The movement phrases we built on week by week might contain the suggestion of a feeling – tenderness, or a certain heft – but I couldn’t help but bring myself to it. The phrases became short choreographies that moved us across the diagonals of the studio and they moved us too, shifting sadness or frustration as we laughed and concentrated and approximated our teacher’s fluidity and groove. When asked for one record that ignites the dancefloor for them, Emma answers with ‘ Salsa House‘ by Richie Rich and describes that indescribable feeling of being “just gone” whenever she hears it. When a tune you’ve been bumping in your headphones is mixed in by the DJ in the club you’re in, or screaming along with thousands of others at a festival, it’s bliss. I recently experienced this feeling afresh at the newly renovated club Koko in Camden, and felt like the 13 year old dancer in me could sleep easy. I think It’s crucial we pass on the opportunity to have that feeling to the next generation of dancefloor fillers.This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . . . 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 On a more serious note, there was a historical thing I wanted to ask you about – this fascinating story I’d never heard before about white men can’t dance being a kind of a learned, constructed thing that happened after the first world war. Your quote, ‘white middle-class men are rarely reduced to their bodies,’ I thought that was so powerful, because right there, you’ve got this economic and colonial understanding of why some people historically didn’t like dancing.

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. As a result, Dance Your Way Home is not a history of hip nightclubs, nor the same archetypal or familiar drug-fuelled stories from dance music history. Instead, Warren explores movement in marriage to music, while crafting a narrative that suggests childhood holidays to Butlin’s are as vital a piece of social history as getting bug-eyed in Berghain. These moving and powerful stories from across the globe are rooted in community, solidarity, agency and self-expression – but crucially, can take place anywhere and everywhere. “The dancefloor isn’t just the floor of your local discotheque,” she points out. “It’s also a work do or a sweaty basement rave. It’s anywhere we gather to dance, at any point in history.” Emma Warren has been documenting and observing London – and the world’s music and dancefloor scene – for decades. This is her third body of work after publishing Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centrea documentation of Lex Blondin’s extensive jazz studio & concert space, and Steam Down: How Things Begin, a pamphlet chronicling the Deptford collective & weekly jam in 2019. There is no doubt that Emma is a champion of community spaces and community feel. This book makes no detour from that; a social history into the idea of the dancefloor, asking why do we dance? And why does it feel good? So it only feels right when after host Haseeb Iqbal introduces her, Emma begins by defiantly saying “everyone in this room is in this book…” I raise my eyebrows, imagining that a lot of her contributors are in the room, which I am proven right about by the cries of support from the crowd, but, given I had never met her, how could I be in the book? I come to understand that Emma means this book was physically put on paper by her, but that it was made by, AND for, everyone who has ever moved their body to music. Reading out an expansive list of dancefloor spaces that informed the book, including many global locations, as well as most importantly, her mother’s kitchen. As Emma puts it, “yeh I wrote it, but WE wrote it”. Emma Warren has been documenting grass roots culture for decades… 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.

Part of the beauty of this evening, and of Emma’s book, is that it is not genre exclusive. Every type of music – from Jungle to R&B, from Disco to Dubstep – is mentioned, truly asserting the power of the all encompassing dancefloor as a sacred space above bpm definition You uncovered a few DJs with professional dance pasts. I didn’t realise that Fabio had actually been a pro dancer. And Gerald. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. My book of the month is easily Emma Warren’s Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor. Part social history, part love letter, it digs through the individual and collective powers of dancing via the lens of different subcultures and scenes. We’re transported from Anglo-Saxon churchyards up to late 2010s jazz jams in Deptford via reggae dancehalls, Chicago house sets, New York’s ballroom scene and grime and dubstep nights. There are detailed descriptions of dance moves, music styles and soundsystems, as well as the wider political contexts, from gentrification and ever-increasing club closures to hostile policing and door policies. Here, dance is taken seriously; it’s about more than just hedonism and letting loose, but also community, self discovery, health and history.

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.” This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It’s more than a social it’s a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . . . Generously and warmly written, Warren’s book encourages us all to unabashedly express ourselves, to feel the rhythm as best we can, and work alongside one another to make sure there are always spaces for us to keep dancing, resisting, and be in community. As she puts it: ‘To dance you must let go of self-consciousness, embarrassment, pride and prejudice, and embrace what you actually have. […] We’re dancers because we’re human and we’re more human – or perhaps more humane – if we dance together, especially when we make it up on the spot. 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. 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.Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?