Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor

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Us club regulars need no convincing. But throughout Warren’s book, the police are aforeboding presence, poking their beaks into almost every chapter. They’re either closing down aparty, attempting to end the fun, or at least moaning about it. ​ “I wasn’t expecting to be writing abook with so much police in it,” Warren says. ​ “We know the Met have troubles and need to do some radical fixing up of the systems of accountability around policing, generally, in this country. Iwonder if they just need some dancing culture-ation?” 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 enlists Damon to walk – ie compete – in his first ball and blows his mind by deconstructing the American dream as “being able to fit into the straight white world … isn’t that what you’re trying to do? Dance your way into acceptability?” Research shows there are many benefits to dance. Dance improves your heart health, overall muscle strength, balance and coordination, and reduces depression. These benefits are noticeable across a variety of ages and demographics.

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… 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.” 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. 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.Swedish researchers studied more than 100 teenage girls who were struggling with issues such as depression and anxiety. Half of the girls attended weekly dance classes, while the other half didn’t. The results? Girls who participated in dance classes improved their mental health and reported a boost in their mood. These positive effects lasted up to eight months after the dance classes ended. Researchers concluded dance can result in increased self-esteem for participants and potentially contribute to sustained new healthy habits.

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. 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 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.” 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 . . . Warren learns how, in pre-industrial times, dance was more common and spontaneous than it is now. Modernity has alienated us from ourselvesPublisher Faber's blurb about 'Dance Your Way Home' reads: "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... Why do we dance? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? 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. 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." Emma moves on to learn contemporary dance to get a further understanding of what this all means and to generally take herself into new spaces. Emma is all about the now. As she says, ‘I am set firmly against anything which veers into ‘it was better in the olden days’ territory, and generally, I’m with Gil Scott-Heron, who enunciated the ‘no’ at the start of nostalgia.’ She tells a poignant lovely story about a lady dancing her grandad into the next life (I’ll leave this for the book). 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.

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. At a conference on folk dance, Warren learns how, in pre-industrial times, dance was more common and spontaneous than it is now. Modernity has alienated us from ourselves. Men weren’t always coy about throwing shapes in public; it’s a culturally determined hang-up that can, of course, magically dissolve after a few drinks.

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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. 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. 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”.

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. If you are struggling with depression, consider trying dance as a form of therapy. While dancing should never replace seeking professional help, it can be one tool you use to stay healthy. A formal dance class, exercise class, or even grooving alone in your room could be enough to make a difference. Looking for motivation to get started? We have some suggestions that should help get you moving! 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.”

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Most of us are familiar with the great feeling we get from spending time on the dance floor. From weddings and holiday parties to aerobic classes or even dance lessons, moving our body often lifts our mood. Turns out dancing can improve our mental health, and there’s a scientific explanation behind those mood-boosting moves. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Through the book, she is careful not to overstep beyond her own experience and knowledge. Indeed, instead, Warren’s own experiences are central to this book. She tells the story of herself and her family within their wider context – be that dancing to Top of the Pops as a child in the front room, or the specifics of Ireland’s contentious dance halls around the time her maternal grandmother, Máire, left the country for England. She asks questions about what dancing means through the lens of Britishness, Englishness and, in turn, what those terms even mean. Looking at dances from different regions, she suggests, lends us some insight into identities. Aside from the benefits of movement and music, dancing also allows us to become more connected and social. Forming new friendships or rekindling old relationships are wonderful side effects of dance. These social interactions can play a huge role in improving your mood and mental health. 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.