Dancin’ Fool

“I’m a dancin’ fool,
I hear that beat, I jump outta my seat,
But I can’t compete, ’cause I’m a dancin’ fool!”
Frank Zappa from Sheik Yerbouti (get it?), 1979

That about sums it up for me, ever since I pushed past my fear and self-consciousness and danced behind the rear-lit projection screen in a psychedelic display for the first Stereo Session that the Arcadia High School Drama Department hosted during my senior year back in 1970.

We’d assembled a master mix of cutting edge music and powered it into the Little Theater with huge, state-of-the-art speakers loaned by one of the student’s dad who was a Hollywood sound man, coupled with a psychedelic light show using creative theater lighting. Pioneering early disco!

Of course I was under the illusion that the angular distortion would render me completely anonymous, (but it turns out I had a distinctive silhouette) and it freed me to explore dance without steps or a partner. Those were the times when it was still considered either pathetic or boastful to dance alone, and although the dancing mode by then permitted couples to stand apart, independent of physical contact, being a clownish nerd wasn’t conducive to getting dance partners so I didn’t even bother to try.
I only ever went to one school dance, and that was because I was up for a spoof award and needed to attend. There was some lame school-wide competition for “Mr. Irresistible” where the girls were issued tickets and were adjured to not speak to any boys all day long. If they were persuaded to speak, then they had to relinquish their ticket to the boy, and the guy with the most tickets at the end of the day won the distinction of Mr. Irresistible, to be announced and crowned at the dance.
The jocks and the student council soshes were probably behind the stupid thing (the de facto arch rivals of the Drama Department) and were hustling amongst themselves for what they figured was a sure win. Ha!
I found it devilishly easy to get the tickets from my fellow Thespians, probably because I was such a wimpy clown that they forgot I was actually a guy, too, and at some point it became a game for us to steal the thunder from those stuck up “beautiful people”. I don’t remember how many I got but I blew the nearest contender out of the water. It was a fun moment to see the looks on the faces when the winner was announced. Of course, since the game was run by the snubbed popular clique, my award was a bouquet of vegetables! I figured they were making fun of me, but that’s fine. I was the class clown, after all. At least it was recognition, right?

I have always been an avid listener of pop music but it had never translated into dance for me much before. I decided a long time ago that pop music is an excellent way to stay contemporary with the times and is one of my approaches to staying young, or at least alive in the now. Pop is reflective of the culture and times in that it is just that. Popular. It is a broad common denominator reflecting the mood, politics, tastes, attitude, values and obsessions of a time and a people. Music is so pan-accessible that we widely identify with those themes, contemporary culture being a result of the many points of view of the contemporary theme in question.

There is a particular sound, however, that I have been listening for since I started listening to music in general. Early electronic works approached it but were far from the thing my ears longed to hear. Every now and then a group would do a single piece that was more like it. Songs such as ” Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys and “Soul Experience” by Iron Butterfly are examples from the Sixties, then “Baba O’ Riley” by The Who, and ELP, and Alan Parsons Project et al. up through the disco era when electronics and synthesized rhythm became a staple aspect of the music. There was something compelling but not quite there yet. Then there were experimental groups such as Devo and Kraftwerk who brought it along, and the New Age sounds brought a gentler, more hypnotic approach, but still it wasn’t what my ears were seeking. Strange. Like listening for a song you’ve never heard yet, but know you will recognize when you hear it.

I continued to dance anyway, and found a broad venue of styles that I found appealing. While I was in college I got into folk dancing. There was a group that met regularly at Cal Tech, Israeli dances at lunchtime on campus at CSUN, and I occasionally went with friends to bigger venues in LA such as the Gypsy Camp and The Intersection. That expanded to some basic Latin and ballroom, important basics for any actor. I loved to dance, though the opportunities became less and less as I started moving around and lost my dance partners. Even though the eighties and nineties gave over to full electronica, my body was still waiting for the right,…something.

Then in 2002 I wandered into a party dome in Black Rock City, Burning Man, AND FOUND IT! During my absence with other life issues, the music and technology had matured and evolved into what is commonly known as house music. HOUSE!

House is the embodiment of popular in that it is done live, in the moment, for the moment, styles and themes specifically chosen for the audience, with wide spectrum electronica crafted to facilitate the mind and body to have separate lives. The effect, for me anyway, is comparable to what Sufis practice, and shamans, and any number of ecstatic dance rituals which serve to release the body to dance itself, disengaging the controlling brain and freeing the psyche to resonate at its own frequency and tempo. Repetitive rhythms, rumbling bass pummeling, and audio phase shifting all serve to induce what can be termed a trance state.

For me, it was like giving over to a puppet master and allowing my body to dance itself, observing how the music compels it to different responses, different patterns. A kind of synesthesia where my body translates the wavelengths directly into movement patterns.
I discovered that House has its roots in Chicago gospel music. It suddenly made sense why it felt like a coming home.

It connected to those high energy, Spirit-filled tent revivals that Grandma used to take me to, back when I had my first vivid spiritual experiences. House took me to Church. Still does!
An aspect of the culture surrounding the musical phenomenon is that, because the technique is one of live performance, some DJs are better than others. I have noticed the ones who are the least effective are the high strung ones who are too much in their heads and not in tune with the pulse of the room or the moment. But some are virtuosos in their ability to “play” a room, making it a guided journey. Those more keen at the tables naturally draw a following and the “party” moves from venue to venue. Some of my favorite DJs know my gospel bent and will deliberately “take me to church”, knowing that the Dancin’ Fool will go all holy roller and throw off hallelujah sparks. For me it’s church, recreation, and aerobics all in one sweaty, joyful burst! “And David danced before the Lord with all his might” 2 Samuel 6:14

Here’s the thing, though. I had to wait half a century before it finally came along. While I contend that the dance and regular acoustic baths probably serve to keep me young, I no longer have the resilience to pull the all nighters anymore. Gratefully, a large contingent of house heads are neo-hippie in their appreciation for things such as fresh air, sunshine, and dancing barefoot in the grass so I have alternatives.
21st century Love-ins. I found them!
Sometimes I get some of the strangest reactions at these House events, though, because I’m usually at least twice the age of anyone there. Most of my peers dropped out in the last century, leaving me as the resident “House Daddy”. I get everything from thumbs ups for still being at it, the same unintentional condescension I used to give oldsters who “got” my music in my day, to being auditioned for when people wrongly assume that I must be a choreographer or talent scout or something if I am still dancing at my age.

Still, I don’t care, ‘cuz I’m a Dancin’ Fool!