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. 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. From here we move through the electric slide, onto how jazz brought about a ban on dancing in Ireland in the 1930s and then into the youth club. Not sure about you but when we were still in primary school aged 11 the youth club was where we went to do (admittedly pretty terrible) breakdancing to the sound of Streetsounds Electro compilations whilst eating crisps. It was ace. We had a lino and a place to go… Published by Faber next week, Emma Warren’s ‘Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor’ — a book about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on — is our March Book of the Month. Read an extract below. 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.

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. 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?

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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”. 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 found Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton impossible to put down. It contains wonderful characters and a fascinating political commentary on New Zealand’s political failings, as well as an ultimate moral question around how power is shared in society. Brilliant – 10/10! Jojo Jones went down to the launch of Emma Warren’s new publication, Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor, a book covering the social history of global dancefloors. For the launch event in March, Emma Warren appeared in conversation with Fitzroy “Da Buzzboy” Facey (Soul Survivors Magazine) and Marsha Marshmello (NTS) hosted by Haseeb Iqbal (Worldwide FM) at Spiritland Kings Cross…

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.In the closing questions Emma reminds us that it just takes one person to loosen up and start dancing for a space to become a dancefloor. Each panelist is asked who their dancefloor partners are, as dancing is “vulnerability and beauty mixed together” (according to Fitzroy). And we should cherish those moments, the dancefloor, and especially those dancefloor partners who give us the courage to be there. I made sure, at the first chance I had, to message my dancefloor partner, telling them how grateful I am for them and the dances we’ve shared together. 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.” 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. 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?

In the first of a new series 'Narcissistic Mothers' Ena Miller meets 'Charlotte' who had a revelation in therapy - she now believes her late mother was a narcissist. How did that shape her life? 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.

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. 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 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. 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.