warning: impending rant. it includes sweeping generalisations and comes with the following disclaimers: i am a) not the best dancer in whole wide world; b) not a dj; c) female.
last night i went to The Laundry for a friend’s birthday and a bit of a boogie. for those who live in melbourne, you know that it’s not the best club in the universe. but on a cold and rainy night in the middle of spring, it was where the party’s at.
i know i’ve said this before, but i believe dancing and sex to be on the same playing field. and i reckon the way someone dances tells you a lot about, well, them. as an extension (ahem) to that, i reckon you can tell a lot about the way a dj fucks by what he/she plays. and one of the dudes at the laundry, girls, is gonna be a lousy lay.
it was one of the frustrating psudo-fucking experiences ever. almost as bad as the worst sex you’ve ever had – he had no stamina: playing tracks that would build up to be a good pumping danceable beat, letting them carry for about a minute, then switch it. just as we were getting our groove on! it would completely kill the rhythm. and i forgave him a few times, there were a few cool tracks which saw an almost-full dancefloor, but time after time i was frustrated as fuck. i wanted to go over to him and yell “just let me dance, will you!!!”
which confirmed for me how much dancing is like fucking – girls need time to work up to it all, but can go all night. where as guys love to mix it up, keep it snappy, to keep themselves engaged, for want of a much better word*. and this was no more obvious that on the dancefloor last night. the male bar staff and a couple of the guys dancing were totally loving the hit-and-mix. they didn’t actually have to ‘dance’ for that long and got all high-five about that wicked remix of a remix of a remix, with that pop-culture-i’m-so-hip-dialogue-sample maaaan. whereas my (girl) friends and i were all getting so frustrated at him building it up, promising that ‘i’m gonna make it pop’ a thousand times, without actually dropping anything in above 95 BPM. ugh.
a few other things i noticed, which added to the amusing insight about dancing as pseudo-fucking:
white people have no rhythm. wow. it’s really obvious. i mean i knew that. watch any stand-up comedy from eddie murphy and you’ve been told a hundred times, but i really saw it last night. there was an especially ‘white’ couple ‘dancing’ which was hilarious – she was all joints and limbs, with the worst style ever, but trying out the oh-so-sexy-who’s-your-daddy-doggystyle-moves. it was kind of embarassing and i shuddered to think what their sex life was like.
then there was the group of very-pretty ladies who, rather than just dance, they felt that they had to either take the piss out of dancing, by doing very bad dance moves, or by talking about what moves they were doing. i couldn’t work out whether this was de rigeur for the youff these days, or whether they were just nervous. i also wanted to say to them “just shut up and dance, will you!”
i could make some crass segue between rhythm and structure, space and conceptual installation art practice here. but i think i’ll leave it. “shut up and dance, will you!” will just have to do.
*see, sweeping generalisation!