The Club and the Dance: Everyday expression
Image - Taken by Shokirie Clarke at Nike x The Capsule LDN ‘Own The Floor Sessions’
Article by | Teni Oluwunmi
PART 1 | FIRST ENCOUNTERS, FROM MOVEMENT TO STILLNESS
The first language I was introduced to was the universal language of dance - language that conveys a multitude of histories and stories in a way that vernacular language cannot.
Before I even came into this world, I was stirred by the affective current of movements’ rhythms and flows, dancing in the womb to the pulse of my mothers heartbeat. As a child, I was enamoured with dance. Being surrounded by music- primarily at family functions - wherever there was music, dance always followed shortly after. Those were my earliest memories of dancing, and where I realised the often reduced value of dance and movement fell flat, trampled on by the shuffles and steps of feet attached to people whose emotions were released on the dancefloor, whether it be sorrow or joy.
As I got older, however, I became less enthused by dance, more self conscious and concerned with my ability as a dancer; whether or not I was ‘good’, a shift that became increasingly apparent as I approached secondary school. I was coming into a newly discovered and constantly changing self and I felt the force of perilous factors conspiring against my movement; the hypersexualisation of the female body, both in movement and in stillness, and the irreverence for spaces of dance as a consequence to this conflation of dance with the licentious.
In the Wings at the Opera House by Jean Beraud
Historically, dancing has been outlawed as a dangerous social force, dancing women especially stirring uproar. Across various landscapes in the 19th Century, the social position of women who danced for a living remained precarious. The Ballet was far from the respected art form we recognise it as today, instead, the opera house acted as a brothel, and ballerinas were seductive ladies of the night. This association with dance and immorality is yet to be fully shaken, at least in British society, far from a nation that champions ‘everyday dancing’ (as crafted by Emma Warren in Dance your way home, that is casual dancing i.e a two step). Whereas dance remains an esteemed cultural export to many nations across the globe, manifesting itself in even the simplest everyday routines and movements, in the British isles, dancing - unless on a professional level - remains a clandestine afterdark affair, relegated to the jurisdiction of the nightclub, a space that in the collective consciousness has become synonymous with debauchery instead of vibrant cultural production.
During the mid to late 20th century, this was starting to change. The Albemarle Report (1960) effectively marked a new genesis for the youth club, calling for a near doubling of investment in youth funding, along with imparting the youth centres with ‘larger rooms for dancing and games’. In a similar vein, Anna Duberg, a scholar in adolescent psychiatry, in 2016 researched the effects of twice-weekly collaborative dance class on teenage girls who were experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety. The study revealed that these relaxed and improvised dance sessions decreased their symptoms, making a compelling case for the importance of having these intentional spaces to move freely and dance shamelessly. Now standing regrettably in light of this are the pernicious closures of youth centres.
A 2019 YMCA report signals that cuts to youth services have resulted in the closure of 750 youth centres, the lack of physical space for youth directly funnelling into increased youth violence.
On a personal level, I too have felt these ramifications; At a time when I probably needed to dance the most, for the lack of having an environment to do such, dancing became something that contributed to my shame instead of my joy and an avenue for expression.
Around the same time as the Youth Club, its discos melting away stiffness, the reggae dancehall was also making its strides in the nation. Finding its inception in the homes and hallways of the windrush generation, it excavated the tradition of dancing in halls; stepping, sliding and hopping to the booming bass lines of the sound system. In the latter generations to come, this shifted from the home to a place more underground;
A fortress of freedom. The dance became a healing balm, a means of procuring joy in the midst of the cold violence of British institutions, found in the potent tincture of the police, the school and the workplace.
The tender, intimate bumping and whining of lovers rock, connecting partners at the waist, was like a warm hug. While at the opposite end, Jah Shaka’s dance saw moves like a ‘warrior style’, in the words of Vivien Goldman who found herself on the Shaka floor in 1981; ‘your body might be a fortress, holding stresses caused by hostile or traumatic experiences, in which case dancing can allow you to shake off at least some of the armour’. Through these dancefloors, melting into a collective groove step, people found belonging, unified in a collective and distilled in them hope for a betterment of their lived realities.
PART 2 | LONG LIVE THE DANCEFLOOR
Dizzee Rascal shot by James Pearson Howes
Both the youth club and the reggae dancehall were essential to the development of a clubbing culture/ nightlife scene. They served as a direct pipeline into the British music industry, catapulting the likes of DizzEe Rascal, who played his first set at his local youth club, and So Solid Crew, who began life in a soundsystem called Killawatt, into lucrative career paths in music. This trend therefore, cannot evade the significance of the dance floor.
As a child I thought clubs were the most magical places on earth. I remember watching the music videos of early 2000s and late 90s R&B and hip-hop artists and wanting to move as silkily and ethereally as the dancers I saw on screen. The one that made a lasting impression on me however, was Beenie Man and Mya’s ‘Girl dem sugar’. THERE WAS A SORT OF EFFERVESCENT GLOW COLOURING THE VIDEO, THE SOUNDSYSTEM JUST AS VISUALLY AND AUDIBLY PRESENT AS MYA’S GLOSSY VOICE AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THE NEPTUNES EDIT OF BEENIE MAN'S‘WHO AM I’AND THE ZEALOUS MCING OF BEENIE MAN- AN ICONIC COLLABORATION. I WAS ENTRANCED BY THE MULTITUDES OF BODIES WHINING, JUMPING, BOUNCING, BRUKKING UNDER THE INVIGORATING BLUE LIGHT, AND WARM FAIRY LIGHTS TO CONTRAST. GOING OUT TO THE NIGHTCLUB TO DANCE SEEMED LIKE THE CLOSEST THING TO TRANSCENDING THIS REALM AND ENTERING INTO ANOTHER.
I am not going to lament over how clubbing is dead and join in with those who nostalgically proclaim how social media and technology has ruined clubbing. This is not to downplay the shift that has occurred in clubbing culture from being incubators of judgement free self expression, as found in clubs like Plastic People which unfortunately permanently closed its doors in 2015 ( long before I was of clubbing age, to my despair) to now in many cases being quite the opposite, where many go to be seen and to gaze at others. My stance on the ‘Is Clubbing culture dying?’ debate is, you have to curate the experience you seek to have. You have to dance, you have to groove, you are a producer of this culture, just as much as the DJ’s are, the relationship between dance and music is a symbiotic one afterall. You must actively search for an event or a club that you enjoy, returning to cultivate a sense of comradery with other attendees, and supporting the venue so that it can continue to exist. This past year, I’ve come into myself through movement, my long awaited bodily homecoming. I’m by no means a professional dancer, nor do I even care whether or not I'm a good dancer anymore, that is entirely besides the point. I have found the sounds that I enjoy, and the rooms I like to move in, from the events put on by Plenty Ppl, Pound and Yam, Hppysurvival to venues such as The Cause, colour factory and Ormside projects. I’ve found myself freed from the shackles of shame and restraint, now embodying this enigmatic, boisterous spur for movement.
Soulection Live in London & Kompnd in Manchester - Shokirie Clarke
These are undoubtedly the best experiences I’ve ever had clubbing (in all my 5 years of experience), yet this has occurred against a devastating backdrop.
A report from CGA Neilson has detailed that 65 nightclubs in the UK have closed since the start of 2024.
The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) has called it an ‘alarming issue’ which threatens to ‘jeopardise not only jobs but the very heart of nightlife and culture in communities across the country’.
A previous report from CGA Neilson revealed that between June 2020 and June 2024, the UK lost 480 nightclubs (37% of its nightclubs) with an average of around 10 closures per month, an unprecedented crisis facing the nightclub and dance music sector.
But this crisis is not limited to its impact on businesses, also bearing wider reverberations on the culture and identity of our nation. Many of our cultural productions have been incubated in the club; the musical genre dubstep saw its cultivation inside the doors of the aforementioned plastic people. There are multiple factors that have culminated to this dire situation: the cost of living crisis, people are understandable unwilling to pay entry and buy a double rum and coke for the price of their weekly shop; gentrification and overdevelopment; moral panics conflating nightclubs with drug abuse, violence and sexual depravity; the Security Industry authority licence introduced in 2001, along with licensing demands that essentially enforced a kind of border patrol on club doors, excluding a large sector of the population who don’t have settled residency; and perhaps the most immediate being the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many to close and never again reopen their doors.
These challenging contexts call for creative reinvention and resistance. There’s a proliferation of ‘meanwhile spaces’ - converted warehouses, storage units or junkyards being repurposed as club spaces, although this solution lacks permanency and stability, it is a way to keep things alive, even if it has to do so in constant flux. The democratization of the dance floor, the accessibility of flash drives and hardware, Djs skilled in their craft, further call for us to create spaces for dancing. Much like the young people who went for the weekly Shubeen at 51 storm, carrying speakers, amplifiers, and record boxes into the basement, we too must preserve this tradition; build our own parties and cultivate our own joy amidst this gloomy climate.
