This thread is sponsored by Jackwc, BEA's official party-hipster douchebag. It is also sponsored by JMan's birthday post from a few years ago, which shed immeasurable light on the autist experience.
I know this site is about albums, but long before that in history, people consumed music at dance parties of some sort. This thread is about how you listen to music at weddings, in the club, or even at concerts.
I used to go dancing a fair bit in high school; my home school speech and debate league would hold dance parties every few months, and I'd especially love going with my highschool sweetheart every New Years Eve. I also danced even threw a few dance parties at my house by the end of high school, though I mostly played stupid Pitchfork crap like The Verve, Olivia Tremor and At the Drive In.
I also would do this thing in early high school where, whenever I heard a song I hated (as I'm sure you hipsters often do), I would do a weird interpretive dance to show my critical opinions on the single. It probably didn't help me get laid, but it was really fun nonetheless.
Anyway, since I started college I haven't danced nearly as much (save the occasional house party or small dance thing in the corner of the art center), and it wasn't until tonight at my former babysitter (and good friend's) 50th birthday party that I thought about dance again in regards to pop music. As you may expect, there were many awkward musical moments; you don't know what "uncool" music is until you're forced to dance to a nineties house remix of "My Achy Breaky Heart". Still, the only thing more embarassing than dancing to Billy Ray Cyrus is pouting and pretending you're too cool to dance to Billy Ray Cyrus, so I quickly got my groove on. Soon I found a cute middle-aged Filipino lady to dance with, and after getting funky to some Lil Jon, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and gave me her number.
The rest of the part went out pretty well. Though at the end another woman wanted to dance with me, and I went along with it to a song, but when I heard the PA say "I know you want it", I realized it was time for me to go.
Still, a lot of things confused me. Should I have avoided imitating the moves of the girls I was dancing with, and instead had more confidence in my own moves? Do you have to use the particular dance "appropriate" for that particular song, especially "gimmick singles" like The Cha Cha Slide? Why did so many of the ladies clap at really weird time signatures?
Do you like to dance? Where do you like to dance?
Last edited by Applerill on 08/31/2015 03:02; edited 1 time in total
One thing that I wondered last night is whether the dance floor gives you "club goggles" for how you perceive music taste. When you're on the floor strutting your stuff, it almost is like songs that would normally be completely "bad" to you lose their sour taste. Heck, as I said in the OP, i didn't even realize "Blurred Lines" was on until the chorus, and that terrified me. I also didn't complain about that "Cupid Shuffle" or "The Cha Cha Slide", even though I probably would in any other situation.
Do you thing this is a real phenomenon? If so, is it a good thing or a bad one?
One thing that I wondered last night is whether the dance floor gives you "club goggles" for how you perceive music taste. When you're on the floor strutting your stuff, it almost is like songs that would normally be completely "bad" to you lose their sour taste. Heck, as I said in the OP, i didn't even realize "Blurred Lines" was on until the chorus, and that terrified me. I also didn't complain about that "Cupid Shuffle" or "The Cha Cha Slide", even though I probably would in any other situation.
Do you thing this is a real phenomenon? If so, is it a good thing or a bad one?
i rambled a lot in my original response, so here's the skinny, focused version:
in short, i don't think "guilt" over problematic faves or whatever in the club is the most important thing. i think what is fascinating is this movement by QPOC to reclaim spaces that have been pretty consistently safe before the intrusion of other cultures into those spaces and the removal of capital from those spaces by larger entities. artists like Lotic, for example, very heavily stress the darkness of a changing club culture that circulates around such aesthetic concerns as DJ worship and such material concerns as frequent assaults of various kinds, as well as the gentrification of former spaces for the marginalized. i just think these structural concerns, responded to by individuals most affected in material or aesthetic ways, are much more fruitful for discussion than what i almost see as a direct effect of being in this weird fuzzy space where the alienation of the outside world dissolves in this special way.
as for a personal anecdote, i must say that "Taxi" is a nigh-unlistenable song, but one DJ in Cholula this summer managed to make me literally cry in the club dancing to it with a huge crowd of strangers, so there's definitely different "uses" for music that we tend to forget as direct or indirect western descendants of Teutonic ideals of separation of body and mind, art and experience, etc. it is with this gap in understanding that i make the argument that "Intelligent" Dance Music might thus be the most "Unintelligent" of all if looked at in the right light.
You could argue that "Crank Dat's" dance is just another novelty dance with sexual lyrics, but what about the "Shoot Out"? How should we critics of dance analyze a dance you're almost never allowed to perform in public? At other points of the album, Soulja gives us commands almost like they're dance moves ("If someone's talkin and talkin and you don't wanna hear...").
Is there such thing as dance criticism? If so, should a club show a Soulja Boy dance retrospective to have us experience these dance designs and go through them move-by-move? What do you guys think?
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