I can’t remember the first time I danced.
But I can remember the need to dance taking over me at the age of 17, when I started sneaking into nightclubs. Music had consumed my life, had given me an identity I was so desperately looking for. My peers – even, sometimes, girls! – would ask my opinion on the latest indie releases from the like of Suede, Mudhoney and Madder Rose. And, god, did I have an opinion. This bled onto the dancefloor where there were songs that I needed to dance to, to claim from the soundwaves in the air, and those I would hide in the corner from, away from the speakers as if in fear that they would taint me. Music was my life and dancing was the physical manifestation of this first love.
Throwing my limbs and long hair around to indie soon drifted into a more serious dancing – shuffling around all night to drum machines and synths. My university flatmates took me to legendary London techno nightspot Club UK to help ease my first heartbreak. As I was rained on by relentless 4/4 beats I didn’t for one moment think about her, or even look longingly at another girl. I didn’t leave the dancefloor until 6am. In many ways I didn’t leave the dancefloor for the next two decades.
I had my own summers of love in between university years, dancing in fields and quarries and forests. The excitement of bundling into a car, turning up the latest mixtape and setting off optimistically (following sketchy directions transcribed from a phoneline) for the honour of dancing to music we loved is hard to express. Following a car that looked like it might be full of ravers in the hope that they knew more than we did. Getting out the car, shushing excited voices to try and hear faint music we could follow. And then, finally, seeing chaotic packs of cars, hearing the muffled bass and following the lights to the party.
When the party is engulfed in darkness there is nothing but the music, the people, the uneven dancefloor, your new friends. But when the sun comes up and you discover you’re in a utopia your eyes are opened afresh, and the party takes on a new life. It was like Glastonbury Festival every weekend, only the headliners were, wait, who is the DJ? Never mind, this is a tune.
And then, as if touched by a fairy godmother, I started to get paid to go clubbing. I spent 12 years being flown around the world to dance in Brazil, Russia, China and, of course, Ibiza – sent to the best clubs to pass opinion and report back to readers of DJ Magazine. Dancing in the Brazilian rainforest, in rusted theme parks in Estonia, fuelled by neat vodka in Moscow. I saw how much dancing means to the world. I’d find myself on the dancefloor, unable to speak the language of the crowd, sharing moments with a community having the same experience I was, despite all the cultural differences. Humans have spent the last 12,000 years dancing for connection – as a social tool to promote the cooperation needed for survival – and I witnessed this first hand, month in month out.
And yet I can remember being laughed at for my dancing. At the back of a Terry Callier concert I let the music overtake me complete. As I twirled, alone, to the new folk sound I saw a group point and giggle. It never occurred to me to stop – like Sister Sledge, I was lost in music.
I first kissed my wife on the dancefloor. It was 3am, Tiefschwarz were playing heavy electro. It was a life changing moment in the true meaning of the word. It was two days before my 31st birthday, the age when statistically people are most likely to cease clubbing. But my new relationship started a new wave of going out – midweek club nights, dancing down the front of gigs, going to work on 15 minutes sleep. Life was never better – if we weren’t on the dancefloor or in the crowd, we were behind the decks, trying the provide the soundtrack to the sorts of euphoria DJs had gifted us.
And then, somehow, I couldn’t remember the last time I danced.
I had become, I was incredulous to realise, 47 years old. I was exactly ten years older than the age that the general public has suggested that it’s no longer graceful to find yourself in a nightclub. I took to social media to ask when the last time someone saw me in a club was. No one came forward with an answer. Many of my friends also bemoaned the fact that they had hung up their dancing shoes. Life had become a series of quiet moments, and the noise was fading.
Middle age can be a kick in the teeth if you let it. Maybe you’ve got a nice house that’s hard to leave. Perhaps you have kids that require all your attention. Possibly your friends have drifted away and you’ve lost your gang. Maybe the recovery time is too tough, or your leg is playing up again, or you need to be on it for work next week. But somehow clubbing seems like a lot of effort. Hardcore will never die, but you’re feeling like you will, sooner than you’d like. Middle age doesn’t seem to be a time to indulge your identity, immerse yourself in the passions of your youth – the things that made you so happy.
But there are people who have kept right there on the coal front of youth culture – those that never gave up on the joy and connection of the dancefloor. Your people are out there, and they are showing you that euphoria isn’t only for the young. Not for this crowd the yearly-hit of nostalgia for the group that they crushed their skinny 18-year-old bodies to the barrier for. The quiet moments are still there, but these people are out midweek to hear new bands, on the dancefloor at the weekend moving to the newest tracks.
And I’m so happy to find myself right there with them once again.
See the project Wasted On The Young here