Notes on a Lifetime of Superfundanceparties

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Notes on a Lifetime of Superfundanceparties

1. Tonight I am going to a dance party, one that, like many dance parties of the past, advertises itself as “new wave / no wave / britpop” (oh cheeky cheeky, oh naughty sneaky). The dj at the party will play Blondie and Franz Ferdinand and Duran Duran and Joy Division, and most importantly, the party is named after a Pulp deep cut that I downloaded onto my desktop with Napster my junior or senior year of high school. This party is named cooler than any other party I have been to so far, cooler than Motherfucker or clubs with names like Lit and Rififi, and even cooler than Misshapes, who djed parties that I missed by a few months when I moved away from New York. Now that I rarely go dancing because I am in my late 20s and prefer movie-watching most of the time, this party will serve as the representation of all the parties I always wanted to go to as a kid, a whole decadent theater filled with dancing debauchers and the guy who looks like Morrissey who always dances crazy at these parties. Before the party I will champagne cocktails with my girlfriends and hear Damon in my head singing “Yes it really really really could happen.” I am going to this party filled with every teenager who spent the last years of the 90s calling him or herself an anglophile. I am going to this party not to party, but to dance and skip around like my body won’t revolt tomorrow, because in 10 years there will be no more Britpop dance parties.

2. I fear that I have become a nerdier dancer than ever before. I have always been a whole body dancer, anticipating every movement of the songs that I know by heart, because I listen to a lot of music on headphones, especially dance music from the 80s and 90s that I have been listening to for years and years. Things people have said about my dancing over the years:

“You dance like a stripper” (high school)
“You use your arms too much” (early college)
“You look like the only person in the room who is having fun.” (60s and 70s dance night, sometime after 21)
“Who ARE you?” (first visit back to NYC after moving away, attending a dance night at one of my favorite old haunts, during “Common People”) (I don’t think it was because I was dancing so awesome that he thought I was a celebrity.)

Now, since I dance less and less in public, and more and more to Beyonce in my apartment where I live by myself and have a rather large space for dancing, sometimes I fear that I am moving more toward amateur choreography, because Beyonce. Amateur choreography, added to my already don’t-give-a-fuck-if-I’m-flailing style means: I am probably a really nerdy-lookin’ dancer. But I’m cool with that. I get to go dancing, and I don’t give a fuck.