I really enjoyed 'Out to the Dancers', a conversation between Emma Warren and Ezra Collective’s Femi Koleoso at the South Bank Centre's Purcell Room, centred around what dancing means to them in different ways (8 August 2025).
A key theme was around inclusivity - who gets to dance, how and where? In answer to the opening question, 'What makes a great time on the dance floor?', Femi expanded on Emma's ingredients of space and sound by adding inclusivity - 'I think dancing is like almost a human expression of feeling welcomed. And it's very difficult to dance, if you don't feel welcome somewhere.... I think if you can make people feel included, they dance'.
As a young black man growing up in London Femi has of course had a particular experience of what welcome means. As he recalled, planning for a night out was always accompanied by the nagging worry of whether he and all his friends would actually get in. There was an interesting discussion about doors, Emma talking of the excitement of the bass rattling of the door as you approach it, 'the door as a kind of holder of the sound' promising how you will soon be feeling the music inside. Femi said that he hated that very moment, carrying with it the threat of rejection at the final hurdle after all the queuing. No wonder he said he preferred dancing outside with one less door to negotiate.
Interesting to see how this perspective plays out in Ezra Collective's approach to performance - 'the party starts on stage and everyone's invited' with a conscious effort to make people in the audience feel included, something I really felt when I saw them.
The talk was part of the South Bank's summer programme 'Dance your way home', inspired by Emma's book of the same name and featuring a month of dance-themed events. In fact while the talk was going on hundreds of people were dancing on the riverside terrace outside to Deptford Northern Soul Club.
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| 'Out to the Southbank dancers' - Emma Warren's mini-zine for the events |
Looking forward to reading Emma's new book on youth clubs, out soon.
(thank to Jools for photo of Emma and Femi)
