Stonewall

In the later 1960s, the Stonewall Inn was one of the few gay bars in New York where the management allowed dancing: there was a jukebox pumping out Motown, but only when the police weren’t looking. If Lily Law or Betty Badge were spotted, a light came on to warn people to stop dancing or touching. Cops often called by checking ID and that everybody had the legally required three pieces of clothing 'appropriate to one’s gender'. In June 1969, the police raided again - Jayne County describes what happened:

Something happened in the summer of 1969 that changed my life, although it wasn't until years later that I recognised it anything terribly important. I was on my way to the Stonewall [Inn] one Friday night in June, and when I got to Sheridan Square there was a bit of a commotion in the street. One of the regulars came rushing over and told me that the police had raided the Stonewall, roughed up a lot of the queens, stuck them behind the bar and done sex searches on them to establish that they were men.

Miss Peaches and Miss Marcia, two of the mouthiest street queens in the Village, were really furious, and they'd run round to the front of the bar, shut the door, piled up trash against it and set fire to it while the cops were still in there. When I arrived there were scorch marks all over the door, and cop cars coming from all directions. Everyone was running around the Village going, 'They're raiding the Stonewall!' People began to gather and it grew and grew.

The queens got very vocal, and some of them started to pick things up and throw them at the police. At one point a police car came down Christopher Street, and five or six queens leapt on it and started jumping up and down on the roof, and the roof just caved in. More and more people arrived and started joining in.

Word was getting around. There were hundreds of people standing around wondering what to do. I was with a group of queens and we started walking up Christopher Street going, 'Gay power! Gay power! Gay power!' We walked all the way to 8th Avenue, and then we looked at each other and said, 'What do we do now?' So we turned around and walked all the way back down Christopher Street, still yelling, 'Gay power!' By the time we got back to the Stonewall there were hundreds more people there. They stopped the traffic. The buses couldn’t get through. People were screaming ‘Gay power!’ at the passengers on the buses. More fires were started.

At one point, we were on the corner of Sheridan Square, and we could see the police lining up along Greenwich Avenue with riot gear and shields and everything, so we all put our arms around each other and started dancing along singing, 'We are the Pixie Girls, we wear our hair in curls, we never play with toys, we'd rather play with boys,' to the tune of 'Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-de-Ay'. The policemen were laughing. In the end they cordoned the whole area off, and people were rioting there all night.

The riots went on for hours and hours and dispersed really late. The next night everybody just went down there and did it again. The bars were getting raided regularly, and people just got fed up. There was something in the air anyway; riots were happening a lot in America at that time - anti-Vietnam, anti-police, anti-whatever. If you were out and you heard something was happening, you'd say, 'Oh, let's go and be in the demonstration!'

The queens took the lead in the Stonewall Riots. They walked around in semi-drag with teased hair and false eyelashes on and they didn't give a shit what anybody thought about them. What did they have to lose? Absolutely fucking nothing. A lot of people were standing around as the Riots began wondering, '1 wonder if 1 should do this? It's going to be a big step for me, a big statement.' But for the queens it really wasn't. It was just an extension of the lives they were already living on the streets. Nowadays, the Stonewall Riots are regarded as the birth of gay liberation, but for me and the other street queens, it wasn’t such an amazingly important thing; we were already out there.

Source: Jayne County, Man Enough to be a Woman, Serpent’s Tail.

Dance before the police come

USA, Harrisburg: party-goers jailed

The city of Harrisburg [Pennsylvania] violated the rights of the out-of-state residents cited for violating a parks ordinance in connection with last week’s McCormick’s Island Camp-out With the DJs, a civil rights attorney said Tuesday... At least 127 out-of-state people were cited by police for illegal assembly under an ordinance that requires a permit for any gathering of more than 20 people in a city park to listen to music or make speeches. Police said they discovered the party during while searching for Christian Yanez, 27, a city man who drowned trying to swim to the party in the middle of the night. The planned 48-hour party was cut short after Yanez’ body was found in the Susquehanna River around 9 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 2. Later that day, police began stopping partygoers as they came ashore on shuttle boats provided event organizers. After being searched and having their identification checked, state residents were told they would receive a citation in the mail and released. Those from out of state were handcuffed and shackled, then transported to police headquarters, where they were held for up to 12 hours awaiting arraignment by night court Judge Robert Jennings III. Jennings set their fines at $1,051, the maximum allowed under the ordinance, and sent those unable to pay the fine, or that amount as bail, to Dauphin County Prison (Patriot News, 11 September 2007).

Though almost all the revellers were eventually released by Monday, they were ‘strip searched, deloused and put into uniforms’ on arrival at Dauphin County Prison, a notoriously harsh and overcrowded US prison (In the Mix, 9 September 2007)

USA, New York: DJ arrested in gay club bust

The staff at Mr. Black, a gay dance club located on Broadway and Bleecker, spent Labor Day weekend in lockdown... Seventeen Mr. Black employees and patrons were arrested during a 4 a.m. Saturday-morning raid conducted by a small army of police—25 to 40 strong, according to one eyewitness (including a few undercovers in drag)—from the Manhattan South narcotics squad. On the morning of the raid, after police pushed past Connie Girl, who works at the door, they reportedly asked, "Who's the DJ?" When Scissor Sisters DJ Sammy Jo identified himself, he was cuffed. His friend Jean Von Baden, a DJ visiting from Denmark and in town on holiday, was also arrested...

Sonny Shirley, an employee, says in an e-mail: "I asked the officers outside why we are being arrested and was finally told, 'You don't have any rights, shut the fuck up.'" Several employees say they saw the cops high-fiving each other as they were cuffing club patrons and employees. "The officers were giving high fives to each other in the bar while we were standing with our hands up as some of our people were being taken away," says Ladyfag. "It was just insensitive and unnecessary." Roze Ibraheem, the head of Mr. Black's security, says that police at the station referred to transgendered doorgirl Connie Girl as "it" and "that" and that "other derogatory anti-gay statements were made." Ibraheem says that at the club, police told the crowd of about 115 people: "Sorry, homos, you're gonna have to find somewhere else to go hang out," and that one employee was referred to as a "fairy" in passing.

During booking, many of the employees were strip-searched and made to do the "cough and squat"... Mr. Black employees don't deny that drugs can get inside the club; but they do deny that they aid or abet it, and they say they certainly don't sell it. "Bad things can happen anywhere. We're a nightclub; we're not having high tea. There are people who do drugs and get drunk," says Ladyfag. "But this was like we were criminals. You just got the feeling like this is what it must have been like: We're gay and we're being attacked." (Village Voice, 11 September 2007).

England, Great Yarmouth: police station clash

The conflict between police and party goers escalates in the East of England as the crackdown on free parties continues (see previous posts):

Eight people have been charged after a police station in Norfolk came under siege at the weekend. Five of the eight revellers, who are believed to be predominantly male, have been released on bail pending further enquiries while the other two are still at Great Yarmouth police station, where the event took place.They are all due to appear at the town's magistrates' court on September 6. More than 100 people hurled beer cans, bottles, bricks and blocks of wood at officers and tried to storm Great Yarmouth police station in the early hours of Sunday morning. The angry confrontations were sparked after sound equipment destined for a rave on the town's Harfrey's industrial estate was seized. So far 44 of the ravers' cars have been seized for evidence and nearly 20 people have been arrested (Norwich Evening News, 20 August 2007)

Police last night warned that illegal raves will not be tolerated during the final bank holiday of the summer. Norfolk and Suffolk police chiefs issued a joint statement in a bid to prevent a repeat of Sunday's bloody confrontation, when ravers clashed with riot officers on an industrial estate in the town... At the height of last week's violence, more than 100 officers responded in riot gear and used CS spray to force out some 300 revellers who had barricaded themselves in a factory yard at Harfrey's industrial estate after the rave had been disrupted (EDP, 24 August 2007).

Brooklyn Bridge Street Party

One night of Fire in New York (Village Voice, July 16 2007) :

'Global terror, the NYPD's increasingly restrictive rules governing public gatherings, and a city economy based on honing New Yorkers into efficiency drones has sucked much of the spontaneity from New York City's street life. So it was a rare act of liberation to watch a crowd of thousands—sans permit—swamp the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday for a renegade street party known as "One Night of Fire."More amazing still, the cops let it happen.

Perhaps the NYPD brass figured there was just no stopping the exuberantly costumed hordes who began converging from both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge at the assigned time of 7:57 pm. Organized via email and listservs, the party came with instructions to "wear white, the more costumed the better. You are the angels that keep this city alive and untamed." People did that and then some, showing up in wings, festooned in sequins and gossamer threads, smothered in white plastic bags, or covered in face paint.

Prodded along by "coaxers" dressed in red and black with flaming cherry motifs, all sorts of drummers, pipers, stilt-walkers, angels, devils, and curious creatures filled both the pedestrian and bike pathways—to the great annoyance of commuting cyclists forced to dismount and wade through what felt like a cross between Mardi Gras, Burning Man, and a Grateful Dead show parking lot.

No one knew where the party was headed, which was half the fun, the point being just to be there and test the bounds of what's possible in this increasingly bounded city. A 9:01, a great whooping went up as a txt msg came through to "follow the cavalry!" That turned out to be a guy in a rubber horse-head pedaling a bike and blaring what sounded like a foghorn. We flooded back into Manhattan and into City Hall Park, where people frolicked in the fountain for several minutes, then on to the Q and R trains to Brooklyn.

It was so packed, it took half an hour just to get on the subway, despite the gyrating exhortations of several half-naked stilt walkers and Carny gals urging people on. For a second, it looked like things might turn ugly when a half dozen cops armed with with assault rifles jumped out of a black SUV on Broadway, accompanied by several police vans. The cops eyed the crowd warily, then just as quickly got back in their SUV. But that was the closest things got to conflict.

Subway cars became moving discos, jammed with marching bands, ravers blaring boomboxes, pole dancers and a guy toting a cooler full of liquor-drenched cherries and other libations. And at Coney Island, police watched as a dozen or so fire twirlers whirled flames on the beach, accompanied by scattered bursts of fireworks. The commanding officer clapped as he ordered the cops to shut down the pyrotechnics. Later these same officers watched as skinny dippers dashed into the waves. They eventually ordered everybody out of the water'.

Pictures by Sarah Ferguson. More reports and pictures at NYC Fashion Geek

Dancing with Emma Goldman

The anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) is perhaps best known today for one quote attributed to her: 'If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution'. It seems that she never actually said these words, but in her autobiography Living My Life her joy in dancing is obvious.

At one point she recalls her first ball in St. Petersburg, aged 15: "At the German Club everything was bright and gay... I was asked for every dance, and I danced in frantic excitement and abandon. It was getting late and many people were already leaving when Kadison invited me for another dance. Helena insisted that I was too exhausted, but I would not have it so. "I will dance!" I declared; "I will dance myself to death!" My flesh felt hot, my heart beat violently as my cavalier swung me round the ball-room, holding me tightly. To dance to death - what more glorious end! It was towards five in the morning when we arrived home".

After moving to the United States, she was involved in supporting a strike by Jewish women cloakmakers in New York's East Side in the 1890s, including dances for the strikers: 'At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for, a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to became a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal'.

Later in New York, Goldman met the veteran Russian revolutionary Catherine Breshkovskaya known as Babushka: 'At the Russian New Year's ball we greeted the advent of 1905 standing in a circle, Babushka dancing the kazatchokwith one of the boys. It was a feast for the eyes to see the woman of sixty-two, her spirit young, cheeks ruddy, and eyes flashing, whirling about in the popular Russian dance.'

So even if 'Red Emma' didn't say the exact words put into her mouth on posters and t-shirts, it would seem that they were a fair enough representation of her stance.

The picture of Emma Goldman was taken in around 1886 shortly after she left Russia in the wake of anti-semitic pogroms.

Dancing Questionnaire 5: Charles Donelan

Charles Donelan has sent in this fascinating questionnaire covering his dancing odyssey through some legendary clubs in New York and elsewhere with a cast including Madonna and the Jesus & Mary Chain. Charles writes regularly on arts and entertainment for the Santa Barbara Independent, but really should get working on that book on 1980s New York!

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?
First ever was probably to some classic rock cover band in the junior high cafeteria. Or was that the gymnasium? But really dancing—for me that started in New Haven , CT , USA around 1979. People danced to the new wave and punk music of the time, but that was where I also began to hear the first Sugarhill records, and to dance to James Brown, Fela, and Parliament/Funkadelic at parties in dining halls or at people’s apartments. This was fun but still essentially random, just college kids messing around.

By the time I moved to New York City in 1982 I had discovered the Mudd Club, Danceteria, and the Peppermint Lounge, where people were dancing to the Bush Tetras, the Feelies, James White, Konk, ESG, and other new wave bands of that era. But this was also when “The Message” broke, and a lot of other great early hiphop, and I can remember hearing it for the first time on club dance floors at places called things like “Fallout Shelter” that closed after a month and thinking this is big. At first people did the same new wave style dance to the hiphop beats, bent at the waist and knees, crossing their arms and legs rhythmically, low in front, and popping up at exciting moments, and spinning 360 or 720 degrees. When I started working as the elevator boy at Danceteria in 1983 (flyer left), the second floor dance area had a range of steady DJs who were all in Rockpool—Mark Kamins, Ed Bahlman, Walter Durkacsz, and Johnny Dynell—and they all had the signature New York sound—a mix of hiphop, disco, rock, funk, and what we now call “80s,” all filtered through these really loud, really noisy sound systems and mixed with way too much cheap phase shifting etc. All the kind of cheesy effects that you can still hear on something like Armand Van Helden’s New York a Mix Odyssey CD.

Around 1983 everyone started to go to the Roxy roller disco on Thursday nights to hear Afrika Bambataa. There was crazy break dancing going on there, with an “Everbody”-era Madge right in the middle of it [Madonna's was the last record played at the Roxy's gay club earlier this year - even if she didn't turn up personally - Neil] . Malcolm Mclaren hired young teenage doubledutch rope jumpers from Harlem to perform at 3 in the morning to premiere “Buffalo Gals.” My gf and I were in the Roxy VIP with Daryl Mac, Run, and John Lydon. If you want an idea of what the sound was like, think the loudest system ever, turned up. Each week they premiered a song—I can remember being there for the premiere of “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” To make the people really dance, Afrika played just the first two bars of “Hey Mickey!” for five minutes.

2.What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?
Connecting with other people. There are certain things that only come out on the dancefloor, and great music takes people far out of themselves. I have met and befriended individuals through going out dancing who have changed my life, and my interest in nightlife has had an impact on my career. But the most significant things that happen while out dancing are the excitement of the moment and the intensity of the memory impressions that it leaves.

3. You. Dancing. The best of times…
Nell’s on West 14th circa 1986-90 had a great, small, dark basement dancefloor. It is perhaps best known as the place where Tupac’s New York sexual assault charges began. Nell’s had a really strict door policy, but it was still done by coolness, rather than how much money people planned to spend. The cover charge was $5, and they took it from pretty much everyone, at least for the first year. For at least the first two full years we had the run of the place on Thursdays, which was the best night. The DJ, who is still working, and is a wonderful dancer, was Belinda, and I am convinced that she was responsible for breaking Eric B. and Rakim to the right people in New York . Her signature song was “For the Love of Money,” she played a lot of hiphop, and it was the most exciting dance floor you could imagine. It often had combinations like Tupac, Kate Moss, a Haitian drugdealer, Prince, his bodyguards, the Beasties, and Linda Evangelista all dancing at the same time in a group of no more than 200. That was fun.

So was the next big place to open, which had a much harder edge to it. Mars was in the Meatpacking district and it was opened by Rudolf of Danceteria and Yuki Watanabe, his Japanese backer. This place looked out on the Hudson River through metal pilings and had a neon sign over the dance floor that said DRUGS. The records that broke there include the the late 80s Public Enemy hits, the Soul II Soul record, “Keep on Movin’,” which was incredibly influential in New York, and a whole bunch of other classic hiphop of the late 80s and early 90s.

The best of all New York clubs in the 1980s was the World. This was an abandoned Ukrainian dance hall in the lower east village that was 100 feet from the Toilet, the city’s most notorious heroin spot. The World had a super-strict, totally countercultural door policy, and hosted the U.S. debuts of such talents as the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Pogues. I think that dancing to Street Fighting Man at the Jesus and Mary Chain show at 3 am because the band still had not gone on, and being happy about it, might qualify as the best of times ever.

4. You. Dancing. The worst of times…
Afterhours at Save the Robots on Avenue B… with real vampires.

5. Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?
New York City , see above, and in Southampton , New York , in the potato barns turned nightclubs of the late 1980s and early 1990s. These parties were good, with mostly pop music, but this is also where I got my earliest exposure to techno. Places I traveled to where dancing occurred include London, from about 1981 on, where I went to whatever clubs I could find in timeout; does anyone remember a place in an old theater that had a raked dancefloor? That was something. So was Leigh Bowery (pictured). I saw a very good Pogues show at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden in 1986 I think, and I danced to Haircut 100 at the ICA on or around New Years of 1981. Then there’s Los Angeles , where I went to a vintage warehouse rave in the early 1990s with people who would not do that today. LA has a funny dance club/nightlife history, with 80s hair metal giving way to hard house somewhere around 1993, and lots of the same people somehow attending. The most recent great dance scene I have witnessed was in South Beach Miami for Winter Music Conference 2007. Miami has some of the energy of New York back in the day.

6. When and where did you last dance?
I danced on Saturday night at the Wildcat Lounge in Santa Barbara , California to hard contemporary house. It was Memorial Day weekend, a big holiday here, and I felt I saw almost everyone I know, because Santa Barbara is a small town.

7. You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make your leap up for one final dance?
Caravan by Duke Ellington.

1983 Halloween flyer for Danceteria, New York from the excellent Danceteria blog - where there is a whole archive of flyers from this period.

Death of Roller Disco

Following the closure of the Roxy this month, New York City's last remaining roller disco is due to close in April 2007. A news report this weekend stated: 'Roller skaters are hoping the wheels at the city's only remaining roller rink won't screech to a halt. At a demonstration in Crown Heights Saturday, people came out to support the Empire Roller Skating Center, which has been sold and is slated to close its doors at the end of April. After nearly 70 years of fun on wheels, the building is scheduled to become a storage facility'.

In 'Night Dancin'' (1980), a guide to the New York disco scene, Via Miezitis described the Empire in its heyday: 'Rainbows, clouds and blue skies cover the walls. Neon criss-crosses and circles mirror balls hung from high gymnasium-like ceil­ings and transform them into phosphorescent planets in outer space. More rainbow-colored neon outlines a large, square railed-off skating area contained within the main rink; the neon is re­flected on the ceiling and looks like a meteor or laser beams.

Over 1000 skaters cover thousands of square feet of roller rink. Human satellites, they orbit defy­ing gravity, dancing and speeding effortlessly through space. Some re­semble glider planes that float in the air; still others appear as precision per­formance jets as they whirl, dip, roll, fall and suddenly cut across the paths of other "planes." The Empire Roller Disco attracts the best roller disco skaters in the world, who perform their practiced and improvised disco routines regularly to disco beats spun by a regular disc jockey. The dee jay helps lead the skaters through the vari­ous peaks and dips of the speeding and furious en­ergy high that is roller disco at its best'.

Quotes and images from 'Night Dancin'', text by Vita Miezitis, photographs by Bill Bernstein (New York: 1980). There is a petition against the closure of The Empire here.

Battle at the Roxy 1984

From the film Beat Street (1984), filmed at the Roxy in New York.

The Roxy, New York

As previously mentioned the Roxy club in New York closed this month. It opened in 1979 as a popular roller disco and, since 1991, had hosted a gay club on Saturday nights. Now it has been sold to developers - as the New York Press notes: 'sprawling redevelopment has engulfed much of the neighboring land on West 18th Street in recent years, and Roxy’s prime location directly below the soon-to-be renovated High Line made the former truck warehouse an irresistible target'. As it came to an end, the DJ played as the final record 'This used to be my playground' by Madonna.

In the early 1980s, the club was a critical stepping stone for hip-hop from Bronx scene to global phenomenon. As Jeff Chang describes it in his essential 'Can't stop ,won't stop: a history of the hip-hop generation':

"When Kool Lady Blue finally found a new home for her "Wheels of Steel" night, her club became the steamy embodiment of the Planet Rock ethos… To its ecstatic followers, the Roxy would become "a club that changed the world." In June [1982], Blue hung out a sign at the rink: COME IN PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. Her gamble was immaculately timed. She opened the club with all of the scene's leading lights at the beginning of a hot summer when graffiti and b-boying and hip-hop music was on everyone's minds.

"The regulars were Bam [Africa Bambaataa ]and Afrika Islam, and then Grandmixer DST, Jazzy jay, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, and I'd rotate them," she says. "We had no booth. The DJ would be in the center of the floor on a podi­um. Everyone could see what he was doing, and he was kind of elevated to rock star status." On both sides of the DJ, large projection screens displayed Charlie Ahearn's slides of Bronx b-boys, rappers, and scenemakers. Nearby, the Rock Steady Crew convened all-night ciphers on the beautiful blonde wood floors.'"

Although it was "billed as the anti-Studio 54", the club attracted David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Talking Heads et al, facilitating the cross over of the music to a wider audience. One regular recalled "The crowds were very diverse. That was why I was so excited to be there. Suddenly this racially mixed group was having a good time partying in a room, which was a very rare thing. On the level of music and art, people were able to bridge all these boundaries."

The club was used as a setting for the 1984 film 'Beat Street', including the classic break dance battle between the Rock Steady Crew and the New York City Breakers (see next post for clip).

Last Dance at the Roxy

Legendary New York club Roxy closed earlier this month. I'll post some more about its history soon - it hosted a gay club and roller disco up until the end, but also had a key role in the development of Hip Hop. For now here's some footage of the last night.

Dancing questionnaire 3 - Commie Curmudgeon

Bronx-based radical Commie Curmudgeon has completed our Dancing Questionnaire (also posted on his site), and very interesting it is too. Some threads and themes already emerging from these questionnaires, as well as documenting moments and places that don't deserve to be forgotten.

Can you remember your first experience of dancing?

Spinning around on the hallway floor to Meet the Beatles when I was about four or five years old.

What’s the most interesting/significant thing that has happened to you while out dancing?

Stopping traffic in the streets of Manhattan as part of a group that advocated for revolution (even if most of the gawking onlookers didn’t quite get it). All the while dancing. I did that a few times with the New York City branch of the global anti-capitalist-festival group known as Reclaim the Streets [RTS New York traffic sign pictured]. The best event was actually for a relatively small cause, to defend the community gardens, in the spring of 1999. We took over a street in the East Village for a while with little interference for a period that felt like hours. (Probably not as long – I forget how long it was.)

Whats the best place you’ve ever danced in?

Again, with RTS, in the middle of 43rd Street near Broadway, on November 26, 1999. (This was for 'Buy Nothing Day', but also as a prelude to the protests in Seattle that were scheduled for November 30. Somebody asked me if I wanted to join a bus out to Seattle, and I declined, because I didn’t think I should take off from work. Hmm, how many times did I kick myself for that decision later on?) Anyway, it was pretty impressive that we stopped traffic right near Times Square. Though it didn’t last very long – 15 minutes? And many of the people got arrested. I didn’t get arrested – I had a knack for being invisible to the police back then. (It might have helped that I was slightly older than the others and wore slightly less conspicuous clothes. But I happened upon a video later and, as several other people commented, I actually was the wildest in terms of dancing. Not meaning to boast or anything…)

You. Dancing. The best of times….

RTS was good, but golden moments of post-punk youth were better. So… Dancing to a live show by The Monochrome Set in the early ‘80s in a club called the Starlight Ballroom, which was a big, no-frills place in a rundown section of Philly (I think it was Kensington), with about 50 people in the crowd. It was my 18th or 19th birthday, I was blasted in a nice way, and I loved to dance to The Monochrome Set, even though they weren’t known exactly as a dance band [sleeve of 'Alphaville' single, right]. I had good friends there to dance with too. I think that was when I was dancing with all the members of an all-girl art school, toy-instrument kind of noise band called Head Cheese. I went dancing a lot with Head Cheese, and that was fun, if a bit weird. (By the way, brush with fame(?)… The singer of that band, with whom I was fairly good friends for a while (by which I mean just friends, though I wasn’t lacking in other ideas now and then)…went on to form a New York City synth-pop band that had a Top 40 hit in the ’80s. The band was Book of Love, the song was “Boy” (popular especially with the gay set). But I was no longer friends with Susan. We’d had some kind of falling out over…what?…I don’t know…looking back on it, seems like nothing, from what I can tell…) .

You. Dancing. The worst of times…

Some benefit for the Direct Action Network Labor Solidarity Group, in 2001. The benefit was a flop, and I was going through not-so-good times with different members of the group, for different reasons (no, not going to go into it here). The band was some Irish band; I forget who, but they weren’t bad. I sort of danced alongside a few people, activists, who were the only other people on the dance floor. I got drunk, but not for good reasons. Everybody was drunk, but it was a crappy time.

Can you give a quick tour of the different dancing scenes/times/places you’ve frequented?

Hot Club, Philadelphia, late ‘70s – a seedy little place, very punk, very intimate, and wild. That was great… Emerald City, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, late 1970s. Big, garish new wave club, very tacky, but with some incredible lineups and very underpopulated. Saw a double bill there of The Buzzcocks and The Fall in about 1979… Summer porch party in a five-person communal house in West Philly, 1981. One member of the house was in a band called the The Stick Men, who were like a rap-influenced version of the no-wave-funk band The Contortions. We were dancing to her record of The Sugar Hill Gang… Hurrahs, NYC, early ‘80s. Most outstanding experience was a Bauhaus show… Tier 3 and Mudd Club, NYC, early ‘80s. Both were clubs around Soho (if I’m remembering right). Tier 3 was much better, I thought, because it was more intimate and less trendy…. Little club in Tribeca (I forget the name), mid-late ‘80s; they were playing this stuff called “acid house” (loved it)… Limelight, a converted church in NYC, in the mid ‘90s. Not so great, and too trendy. Went to an Orbital show there, and did not have a good time – Orbital was OK, place was far too crowded, just not into pressing bodies with strangers (I can do that on the subway during rush hour)… Irving Plaza, NYC all the way from the mid ‘80s into the late ‘90s. Not a bad place. Had a lot of fun at a Chumbawamba show in about 1998(?) (though I’ve since then gotten very, very tired of Chumbawamba)… And, of course, dancing in the streets, and going to some small warehouse-type raves, with Reclaim the Streets…

When and where did you last dance?

The other night in my bedroom, with a wonderful long-haired cat (by which I mean, really, a cat – I’m not using slang). He clung to my shoulders while I danced around the room to “Sunshowers” by M.I.A [pictured left].

You’re on your death bed. What piece of music would make you leap up for one final dance?

Right now… Probably the song that I just mentioned.

If you want to complete the questionnaire please do, either post it on your own blog or send to transpontine@btinternet.com

Anais Nin: Dancing in 1930s New York City of Rhythm

The writer Anais Nin (1903-77) lived between Paris and New York in the 1930s, and her diaries provide a vivid account of bohemian nightlife in this period. In the latter city, it was the clubs and rent parties of Harlem that were the big draw. The journals describe a 1934 trip with the psychologist Otto Rank:

"Harlem. The Savoy. Music which makes the floor tremble, a vast place, with creamy drinks, dusky lights, and genuine gaiety, with the Negroes dancing like people possessed. The rhythm unleashes everyone as you step on the floor. Rank said he could not dance. 'A new world, a new world,' he murmured, astonished and bewildered. I never imagined that he could not dance, that he had led such a serious life that he could not dance. I said: 'Dance with me.' At first he was stiff, he tripped, he was confused and dizzy. But at the end of the first dance he began to forget himself and dance. It gave him joy. All around us the Negroes danced wildly and grace­fully. And Rank sauntered as if he were learning to walk. I danced, and he danced along with me. I would have liked to dance with the Negroes, who dance so spontaneously and elegantly, but I felt I should give Rank the pleasure of dis­covering freedom of physical motion when he had given me emotional freedom. Give back pleasure, music, self-forgetting for all that he gave me".

A few months later (April 1935) she was back, this time with the writer Rebecca West and the actor Raymond Massey: 'to Harlem, first to a nightclub, to hear some singing, and then to a private apartment. Everyone was dancing and drinking. Half white people, half black, beautiful women, well-dressed men, and jazz, it was intoxicating and magnifiicent, the laughter, the dancing, but I miss the intimacy which grows out of such parties in Paris. Here it is all jokes, banter, evasion'.

Nin's descriptions of black people can certainly be read as patronising, but nevertheless in an era of segregation the very fact of mixed dancing was remarkable.

She perceived a clear link between music and the moods of a modern city. Her night out with Otto Rank concluded 'Driving home the radio in the taxi continues the jazz mood. New York seems conducted by jazz, animated by it. It is essen­tially a city of rhythm".

Later she writes "The radio plays blues. Paris, New York, the two magnetic poles of the world. Paris a sensual city which seduced the body, enlivened the senses, New York unnatural, synthetic; Paris-New York, the two high tension magnetic poles between life, life of the senses of the spirit in Paris, and life in action in New York".

Source: The Journals of Anais Nin, Volume Two: 1934-1939.

Once Upon a Time in New York

Excellent BBC4 documentary this week. Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Funk was only an hour long when any of the subjects are worthy of a series, or even a channel of their own, but it did convey a sense of the excitement of a very fertile time. It is arguable whether New York was singly the birth place of these genres, but it is undoubtedly true that in a 6 or 7 year period (approx. 1975-1982) the city was a sonic laboratory producing mutant musical strains that shaped the next thirty years of popular culture (so far). Not to say that New York wasn't important before or since - the film covered some of the pre-history with the Velvet Underground and the Stonewall riots (showing a contemporary newspaper report with the headline 'Homo Nest Raided. Queen Bees are Stinging Mad').

I liked the footage of the club scenes - Edie Sedgwick dancing at Andy Warhol's Factory, a packed David Mancuso's Loft, punters at CBGBs with John Cale, Debbie Harry (right) and Talking Heads in the crowd. Footage of DJ Kool Herc driving around with massive speakers in his car and block parties, an early Blondie performance at CBGBs doing a cover version of Martha & The Vandellas 'Heatwave'. Most hilarious was a TV report from the British 'News at Ten' direct from the dancefloor at Studio 54 with the hapless reporter saying that it was 'difficult to know exactly what it is that attracts people here'. Perhaps he should have asked Wayne County, Nile Rodgers or Nelson George who int he programme recalled sex and drugs on the club's balcony.

If you are in the UK and have freeview or cable, I think you can catch this programme repeated tomorrow (Friday) at 10 pm

Parties raided on three continents

1. Cambridgeshire, England

"Police officers were attacked with fire extinguishers as they tried to break up an illegal rave at a disused factory on the edge of Warboys. Nine people were arrested and another was taken to hospital and later released after an eight-hour illegal rave took place overnight on Saturday and Sunday. Police from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Suffolk were called to break up the rave, which had attracted about 300 people but, when they arrived at about 12.30am on Sunday, fire extinguishers were sprayed and thrown at the officers... Police also seized several thousand pounds worth of music equipment and a number of vehicles. "

Source: Hunts Post, 21 February 2007

2. Suffolk County, New York, USA

"Suffolk County Police arrested 11 people following an investigation at a rave party in Copiague. Officers began investigating the party at the Third Rail Lounge last Saturday, and found that liquor was being sold without a license"

Source: Empire State News, 20 February 2007

3. Sydney, Australia

"A large dance party near Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens was shut down yesterday and 26 revellers were arrested following a police crackdown on illicit drugs. Officers with drug detection dogs raided the harbourside Azure V party at Fleet Steps... The dance party's website, run by iRIS Group Productions, said more than 5000 people - including some of "Sydney's [and the world's] most buffed and beautiful" - were expected to attend the eight-hour gay and lesbian event. But the party was shut down at 9pm following the raid, which police said was part of a operation targeting drug use and supply in The Rocks Local Area Command.... Another reveller, who did not provide his name, questioned the police's motives in shutting down the party. "As a patron of last night's Azure harbour party, I find it hard to believe the NSW Police shut down the party for the concern and health of the people at the party... they ejected 5000 people out of what was a medically supervised and policed event onto the streets to fend for themselves."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 2007; photo of pre-raid party by 8lettersUK

Disco: blueprint for a future society

Good article on disco by Paul Lester in the Guardian this week:

'For Steven Collazo, the musical director of Odyssey, disco was a time of tensions: between musicianship and mechanisation, between what he calls the "plastic clubs" that played commercial disco and the underground where the harder stuff got aired, and between the latent violence of mainstream hetero discos and the carefree exuberance he witnessed on the gay scene that helped spawn the movement .

"I learned at the 'plastic clubs' to never raise my arms above the imaginary homosexual line, ie above the eyebrows, otherwise the sphincter police would arrest you," says Collazo. But he's got a serious point. "I'm not gay, but I remember one amazing night when I was 18, going to this huge gay club in New York called the Paradise Garage. It was almost like a blueprint for a future society, devoid of social or sexual barriers in an atmosphere of total abandon. I'll never forget that night."

From 'Can you feel the force?' by Paul Lester, Guardian, 23 February 2007.

No spitting on the dancefloor

Extracts from 19th century ballroom manuals:

From a New York publication 1864:

"Loud conversation, profanity, stamping the feet, writing on the wall, smoking tobacco, spitting or throwing anything on the floor, are strictly forbidden."
"The practice of chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, is not only nauseous to ladies, but is injurious to their dresses."
"A gentleman should not address a lady unless he has been properly introduced."
"No persons engaged in a dance that requires their assistance to complete the set should leave the room or sit down before the dance is finished."

From a Boston publication 1858:

"Persons who have no ear for music, that is to say, a false one, ought to refrain from dancing."
"Married or young ladies cannot leave a ballroom, or any other party, alone. The former should be accompanied by one or two other married ladies, and the latter by their mother, or by a lady to represent her."
"Ladies should avoid talking too much; it will occasion re­marks. It has also a bad appearance to whisper continually in the ear of your partner."
"In giving the hand for ladies' chain or any other figures, those dancing should wear a smile, and accompany it with a polite inclination of the head, in the manner of a salutation."
"In public balls, a gentleman offers his partner refreshments, but which she very seldom accepts, unless she is well ac­quainted with him."

From a Dundee publication 1890:

"Change partners often during the evening, in order that all may enjoy themselves. When requiring to use a handkerchief, put it in your pocket immediately when finished with it. Avoid all vulgar practices, such as biting your nails, making noise with the feet etc."

From a London publication 1817:

"No person during a Country Dance, should hiss, clap, or make any other noise, to interrupt the good order of the company."
"Snapping the fingers, in Country Dancing and Reels, and the sudden howl or yell (introduced in some Scotch parties as partly national with them) ought particularly to be avoided, as partaking too much of the customs of barbarous nations."
"Gentlemen are not allowed to enter the ballroom in boots, spurs, gaiters, trowsers, or with canes or sticks; nor are loose pantaloons considered proper for a Full Dress Ball."

Source for all the above: Scotland through her country dances - George S. Emmerson (London: Johnson Publications, 1967, pp. 23-24). Unfortunately the author does not include detailed references to sources.

Rent Parties

"House rent parties were a facet of Harlem life even before the Depression. An outgrowth of parlor socials and church suppers held to raise funds for church needs, house rent parties aimed at helping dwellers of Harlem's railroad flats meet rents that skyrocketed monthly. Neighbors brought all kinds of food—fried chicken, baked ham, pig's feet, pork chops, gumbo, potato salad, and more—to which a supply of bootleg liquor was added. An admission was charged, and the piano players supplied the entertainment. "James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith and Fats Waller became great favorites," Ellington recalled. "For ten bucks a shot, they somehow made appearances at three or four different rent parties on a good Saturday night," which did not end until sometime on Sunday.

It has been suggested that the house rent party grew in popularity as a reaction of blacks to their exclusion from Harlem clubs like the Cotton, Connie's Inn, Smalls' Paradise, etc. There was dancing—the bump, grind, monkey hunch. The pianist, assisted at times by a drummer who muffled his traps by covering the head with a blanket, sought to approximate orchestral effects, which, perhaps, helps explain the character of stride piano".

Source: The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920s – Arnold Shaw (Oxford University Press, 1987)

"Although house-rent parties once flourished in the black neighborhoods of Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C., and other cities, they have become most closely associated with Harlem. During the 1920s and 1930s (and even into the 1940s), such parties formed the backbone of Harlem nightlife, and became for many working people not only an enjoyable and affordable way to dance and socialize but also an economic necessity. For the reasonable admission price of between ten cents and a dollar, plus the cost of liquor and food, guests could dance, drink, flirt, and gamble, while the hosts collected enough money to pay the landlord for another month.

The house-rent party evolved out of traditions that were several generations old by the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. Since the late nineteenth century, African-American families in the rural south had enjoyed Saturday night barbecues and fish fries, complete with music and dancing, at events called "frolics" or "breakdowns." By the turn of the twentieth century, African-Americans in southern cities were throwing dance parties expressly to raise money. Dozens of couples would cram into tiny apartments, and the sometimes painful results of dancing in such confined spaces led to the term "shin-digs" to describe these events, though they were also referred to as "stomps," "boogies," "breakdowns," "skiffles," "scuffles," "struggles," "shake-me-downs," "chitterling rags," and "struts."

To prepare for a rent party, hosts would clear all furniture (except for the piano) from the front rooms of the apartment, take up the rugs, replace regular lightbulbs with more sensuous colored ones, and sometimes rent folding chairs from a local undertaker. Some hosts would even hire "home defense officers" (HDOs), to bounce unwelcome guests and squelch incipient brawls. The highlight of any rent party was the music, often provided by a single piano player, a series of pianists, or even a three-or four-piece musical ensemble. Well-known pianists such as "Fats" Waller, James P. Johnson, and Willie "the Lion" Smith regularly made the rounds at rent parties, where musicians competed in "cutting contests" to determine who was the most talented. Bootleg liquor, usually homemade corn whiskey (called "King Kong") or bathtub gin, was sold by the pint or in quarter-pint portions called "shorties." For an additional price, guests could purchase southern-style meals that usually included some combination of hoppin' John, fried chicken, fried fish, chitterlings, mulatto rice (rice and tomatoes), gumbo, chili, collard greens, potato salad, and sweet potato pone. The party would often last until dawn, or until someone summoned the Black Maria (the police patrol wagon) to break it up.

In order to attract a large number of paying guests, hosts advertised their parties using "rent party tickets." Often, they enlisted the help of the "Wayside Printer," a middle-aged white man who walked the streets of Harlem with his portable press. For a modest fee, he stamped the party information onto tickets about the size of a business card. Interestingly, these tickets always identified rent parties using such terms as "Social Party," "Social Whist Party," "Parlor Social," or "Matinee Party." Other, less elevated terms included "Too Terrible Party," "Boogie," and "Tea Cup Party." Tickets often incorporated popular slang phrases, lyrics from current songs, or bits of poetry. One ticket from 1927 implored: "Save your tears for a rainy day, / We are giving a party where you can play / With red-hot mammas and too bad She-bas / Who wear their dresses above their knees / And mess around with whom they please." Another reasoned: "You Don't Get Nothing for Being an Angel Child, So You Might As Well Get Real Busy and Real Wild."

Hosts would distribute these tickets to friends, neighbors, and even strangers on the street corner. Sometimes, hosts targeted a specific population, such as Pullman porters, interstate truck drivers, or black tourists. Other hosts simply tucked the tickets into elevator grilles or apartment windows. Drumming up a good crowd was important, for competition was fierce; as many as twelve parties in a single block and five in an apartment building, simultaneously, were not uncommon in Harlem during the 1920s. Although rent parties raged every night of the week, the most popular evening was Saturday, since most day laborers were paid on Saturday and few had to work on Sunday. The next favorite party night was Thursday, when most sleep-in domestic workers were off-duty".

Source: Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

Music and Passion were Always in Fashion

"The Copacabana, the famed New York nightclub that entertained the smart set with a young Frank Sinatra in the '40s and was the inspiration for Barry Manilow's signature song in the '70s is looking for a new home again. Its third incarnation, on a commercial block on West 34th Street, has been condemned by the city to make way for an extension of a subway line".

The club opened in 1941 on East 60th Street at a time and featured acts including Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jimmy Durante and Sid Caesar, not to mention "the Copa Girls, a troupe of leggy, fresh-faced dancers. Joan Collins and Raquel Welch got their start in the troupe". After closing for several years in the early 70s it was reopened as a disco in 1976. In the early 1990s, the club moved from 60th Street to West 57th Street, then about a decade later it reopened on West 34th Street.

The club has been given notice of eviction by July 2007. The club currently offers a 15-piece orchestra that plays mostly salsa music, 'Live Tropical Bands, Copa Girls & Cabana Boys with DJ's playing Tropical Music in the Main Show Room, including Merengue & Bachata. The Lower Floor, Carmen Miranda Disco, features American Music with top DJ's playing Hip Hop, Reggaeton, Freestyle, House, Old School and General Top 40 Dance Music'.

Source: Backstage, 23 January 2007; Copacabana New York

'Dancing is not a crime!' - New York City

Metropolis in Motion is fighting to legalize dancing in New York City by repealing its arcane cabaret laws. They say: 'Ever since NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created the Nightclub Enforcement Task Force in 1997 to enact his "Quality of Life" campaign, the city has been waging a war against nightlife culture and industry. The most lethal weapon in the city's arsenal aimed against nightlife are Prohibition-era laws known as the "Cabaret Laws". As clubs, bars and lounges are fined, padlocked and shut down, citizens lose places that foster social interaction and artists have fewer places to express themselves'

In July 2006, Metropolis in Motion held an open-air dance outside of Mayor Bloomberg's mansion to bring attention to NYC's cabaret laws. Several hundred people danced and chanted 'dancing is not a crime'.

'The NYC cabaret law was created in 1926 in an effort to curtail wild behavior in nightclubs, particularly the interracial mixing that was happening in jazz clubs. The law initially limited licenses to establishments serving food or drink featuring three or more musicians or three or more people “moving in synchronized fashion.” It also stipulated that only musicians “of good character” could be licensed to play. In 1961 the law was amended to restrict cabarets to manufacturing and commercial zones, and in 1967 the “good character” musician requirement was nixed. In the late ’80s, the courts declared the three-musician rule unconstitutional. Although musicians have won the battle, dancers are still fighting to repeal the law. Today, only 244 licensed cabarets exist.' (New York Press)