May 26, 2003
The quietest place under the sun
When was the last time you went out dancing? Or, for that matter, the last time you danced anywhere? Subtle foot shufflings at gigs only partially count. I’m talking dancing here.
I haven’t been out dancing for years. Literally, years.
I’m trying to remember the last time. Might have been at an office Christmas do in 1998, drunk on a boat. I remember being on the dancefloor, at least, but not actually boogying. But that could have been it.
If not then, it could have been a few years before at a dire student pub called the Queen of Hearts in Fallowfield, Manchester, with my good friend Niki, on a random off the cuff evening out. As I recall, we met up on a whim in Solomon Grundy’s on Oxford Road before heading off in search of somewhere to shake our tail feathers. It was a Tuesday night in mid-term, and nearly deserted. The handful of customers who were in were laddy, drunk and leary. We danced for an hour to classic 80s sounds, and then bored of the gropes, headed home.
When I lived and worked in Aberdeen, I went out dancing all the time. There wasn’t that much else to do in the summer, when all the students had gone home, except sit and drink. Of course we did that, too, but wallets and livers and 6am starts conspired to make that particular activity less enjoyable than it might otherwise have been. So instead of boozing all night, we’d fuel ourselves with a few pints of cider, or something equally cheap and liquid, and hit the dancefloor.
The Triple Kirks. Oh Henrys. The Lemon Tree. The Mudd Club. Cafe Drummond. The Blue Lamp. Live bands. Eighties nights. Grunge, rock, goth and dodgy tribute acts. A couple of drinks, a couple of friends and a dancefloor, and I was set.
Some of the happiest times of my life, now I think about it. We lived large and out loud. We didn’t care who was watching, we danced to anything, everything, with each other, alone, or anyone around.
In Bolivia, I’d gone out dancing often. Sometimes dreadful places, meat markets, with briqht lights and a deadly combination of latino and euro pop. Whigfield. Mana. Los fabulosos cadillacs.
Sometimes tiny dancefloors at the back of poky bars where a beer cost 12p and a ginebra y tonica cost a fiver. We stuck to fizzy lager and danced the night away to Bon Jovi, The Smiths and Crowded House.
In the Cochabamba business district, we discovered Helloween, the only bar in Bolivia with a be-quiffed Morrissey devotee behind the bar. We exploited his fondness by adopting cod-Manc accents and demonstrating that we could sing along to every word of every song, translating as we went. He repaid us by keeping the bar open until five and “How soon is now?” on the turntable.
In Seville, I danced bulerias, tango, sevillanas and salsa. I danced to Ini Kamoze, Snow and the Cranberries. In Sopa de Ganso, there wasn’t room to dance expansively, so we shuffled rhythmically with arms above our heads and collected carnations shoved in our cleavage.
I’ve danced – well, voqued, strictly speaking – in a club called Alcatraz in Puerta Vallarta, where the walls of the dancefloor were mirrored and the man(olo) i was dancing with spent most of the evening touching up his hair in his reflection over my left shoulder.
I’ve danced in clubs in Liverpool, to repetitive beats with a massive grin on my face. I’ve danced in my college common room, and in village halls. I’ve danced in random clubs, like The Cube in West London – a favourite indie/goth hangout in the late eighties – and big tents on fields. I’ve danced to just about anything you can imagine, music-wise. I’ve danced at weddings, birthdays, and even a funeral, but despite all this, I realise that I haven’t actually danced in years.
I wonder why?
