Maddy Zollo
There are two girls up on the stage at Club Fever on a Thursday night. One is bending over in front of the other, bobbing up and down to the music, her blond hair falling into her face. The other girl’s hips follow her friend’s gyrations as she swings her hands in the air and sings along to Usher’s “Love in this Club” at the top of her lungs. A few guys stand to the side, waiting for an opportunity to slip in between the girls and get in on the action.
Bright lights flash across the crowded dance floor below, but no one else seems to notice the two girls on the stage. Why? Because they, too, are bumping and grinding up on the person next them. For many people of younger generations, this is what it means to “go dancing.” It’s a booty-shaking, spontaneous free-for-all, rarely relying on set moves or even set partners.
Compare the above scene to what your parents or grandparents meant by “going dancing.” Until the past few decades, semi-choreographed dances — from the hustle to the waltz to the jitterbug — made up a significant portion of a dancer’s moves. Teenagers gathered around the television to copy the dancers on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.” Disco dance instructors prepared their clients for Saturday night. And most dancers chose a single partner for each song, if not for the entire night.
According to senior English major Michael McDonald, a member of campus breakdancing group Project Fresh, the reason that organized dance has lost prestige and popularity is due to cultural changes. “In other countries, dance is part of politics, part of the community — you couldn’t be part of the tribe if you didn’t dance,” he says. “In our society, [dance] is only a form of entertainment, so when technology boomed, dancing fell out of style.”
It seems fair to say that the style of dancing one finds at Club Fever Thursday nights takes much less preparation than the foxtrots of the past. While managing to bump, grind and move with the general beat of the music without looking like an idiot can be a challenge of its own, many students admit that their generation really doesn’t know how to dance, at least not in the more traditional sense.
“If there’s a white male that can dance to a rap song seriously and look in the mirror and take himself seriously, then you give me a call,” senior marketing major Taylor Montgomery says. Montgomery says he shares a common view that even though grinding is comparatively easy, it has led to people feeling not only inept on the dance floor, but also stupid and awkward. But what’s the alternative?
Campus groups such as Swing Club, Project Fresh, Ballroom Dance Club and Irish Dance Club aim to teach students new (and old) ways to move.
“Basically, Project Fresh lets people learn and share [dance moves] at the same time, even if they aren’t confident about their skill level,” senior management-entrepreneurship major, French and Francophone studies minor Gloria Mwez, president of Project Fresh, says. “It allows them to learn more about themselves and lets [dancers] be able to do things they wouldn’t think they could normally do.”
Mwez and McDonald agree that Project Fresh is a breath of fresh air from the typical grinding dance culture and gives people another outlet for expression. But will their moves transfer from the floor of the classroom to the stage of Club Fever?
Mwez says she hopes that the popularity of dance shows on TV will bring alternative dance styles back into the spotlight. “Shows like ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ are making dancing more a part of entertainment nowadays,” she says. “Now people are becoming more aware of different styles and qualities of dance. These shows are raising the bar.”
Senior Swing Club President Kaitlin Jensen says, “Dancing could have a comeback with reality television shows like ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ and they do get the idea of traditional partner dancing back in people’s minds.”
Jensen, an Arts and Letters pre-professional and pyschology major, notes that today’s popular music, heavily influenced by hip hop and sexually-charged dance beats, places constraints on the forms of dance that have a place in the club scene.
“Basically for dancing to change on a whole, though, music would have to change drastically,” Jensen says.
McDonald agrees. “Dancing is creativity talking to music,” McDonald says. “So when there’s a new form of music, there will be a new type of dance.”
While studying abroad in France, Mwez says she discovered a new genre in music, a combination of techno and pop, that has already spurred a new type of dancing — “Tecktonik” — which blends elements from various dance genres such as breakdancing, popping and locking and glowsticking.
Unlike other dances, Tecktonik fits into the average clubber’s night life. “Tecktonik dancing is present in every club you go to,” Mwez says. “Every kid can do it; I saw them practicing all the time.”
Who knows? Maybe Tecktonik will be making an appearance on the Club Fever stage someday as well.
