Week 3

bring on the hard house!!since last night is freshest in my memory i will begin at the end and end at the beginning with this weeks blog.

So last night finished with some happy hours of hard house in thompsons garage. Thompsons Garage is not a super club, it does not have multiple rooms, great decor, sofas, chill out areas, cocktail bar or podium dancers. Its that other kind of club. the kind that is small, cramped, dark and dingy and with the kind of dirt where you stick to the wall if you lean against it long enough.

It is not a the kind of place where people dress designer and go to be seen. but it is the kind of place to go if you want a bit of proper clubbing. Or as Phil Jackson puts it a bit of transferable knowledge created when people move from one socio-sensual state to another(2004:115). in other words from one bodily felt knowlegde framework to another.What is ‘learned by body’ is not something that one has, like knowledge that can be brandished, but something that one is.(Bourdieu 1990: 73). Jackson notes that this experiential shift expands the parameters of clubbers'sensual landscape and moves them beyond their own habituated social practices,
emotional boundaries, fears, insecurities and their ingrained perceptions of the
world in which they are immersed. I notice this exemplified in the different persona I take on as enter the club. Its a persona I have embodied many times before. A persona that is a bit wilder, more dangerous, more street wise than my usual self as I move confidently with my shoulders back through the crowd and push my way to to the bar. I dance with attitude, creating a space around around my refusing to be elbowed of the dance floor and body popping to the techno beats. i was not out of my self, just a heightened version of myslef. Its a far cry from the person I was just an hour before at the empire salsa night.

At the empire I was unsure of my self, well unsure of my feet more specifically. I had gone spur of the moment when my friend text saying it was his last night in belfast. I made my self up and called a taxi. i felt abit nervous in the taxi, what if i couldnt find my friend? I walked in, ordered a Corona and moved to the balcony to see if I could spot him.I see him down on the dancefloor with a group of friends and I move over to say hello. So far so good. all his friends are cool and I get know everyone - its going to be a good night. However my feet don't work! I listen to the music and I try to repeat the steps we learnt in B's class but its just not working quite right. I have pins and needle coz i just came in from the cold and the music is fast and my parter is clearly and advanced dancer. for some reason I just can't get the steps. I am definately still at the salsa periphery. But different partners grabbed my hand (once i put down the corona)and spun me around so perhaps maybe although novice my particpation was legitimate.

It was definately legitimate in the more standardised format of the ceroc evening I attended on Wednesday night. Ceroc is the Macdonalds of dance (Skinner,2003). This I definately agree with. The men were lined up in rows of six and the women (of which there was a slightly larger number) moved along the assemberly line, a certain number of places as instructed, to be processed as the moves were practised and then turned out for mass consumption after 45 mins, for 15 mins free style. as each move was taught instructions were shouted out which read like the back of a microwave ready meal. 'step back, take the hand, move right hand to ladies left hip and left hand to ladies right hip and turn so that the left hand is at ladies right hip,balh blah blah and microwave on full ower for 3 1/2 mins'. after being cooked on full power and after responding to several signals to spin I felt decidedly dizzy!

Ceroc was fun but it was sensible, it was a night out of the ordinary but it was dull (especially when repeating only 3 moves over and over), it was an alternative reality of hyper-sexuality (Skinner, 2004) but it was tame, it was perhaps for many an articulation of identity

but it was not my identity.

Week two

Am filling in week two's entry a little late. i didn't do much dancing last week only B's tuesday lucnch time salsa class and the wednesday ensemble. It is interesting to watch how other people are picking up the dance and whether people concentrate more on the steps or on feeling the music. Its also interesting that its a different enjoyment in the classes than if i'm in a club or dancing in a personal space at home. In the lessons satisfaction comes from being able to recognice the first beat in the song and keeping my steps in time to it. or in remebering the right way to chnage my hand position to lead a step.But it stills feels a bit aukward when i dance unlike when i dance at home and do moves that i've done over and over again which feels more like sklars idea of kinesthetic knowledge. Even if I am copying moves of MTV the dances i copy are similar to dances i've copied in the past the process of mimesis is different to that which happens in the salsa classes. the moves at home are more known. haha at least sometimes.

the music i dance to at home is generally dance music (my choice)or hip hop (my housemates choice). Erenberg wrote about how jazz, the crooners annd swing music reflected the moods and sentiments of that era. I think that still holds true today as songs (especially british hip hop)reflect social circumstances and tell tales of life. whilst dance music refelcts the escapism of the ibiza generation.

dancing week one

So this is the first entry in my online learning journal for anthropology of dance. Funnily enough i don't know what to say. The first lesson we discussed approaches to the study of dance. The meaning centred approach suggested by Wulf in which dance is looked at as a cultural practice and in terms of what it means to the individual is probobly the most interesting approach. It is certainly the easiest to answer in terms of my own self reflexion of my Salsa experiemce this week. On Tuesday I went to the beginners salsa lesson in Mandela Hall, Skinner's idea of becoming aclimatised to movement was evident as the instructor had the students doing the 'karate kid' move, 'the cowboy', 'the sunrise' and 'the shimmy'. The class although a mix group of ages and sexes all seemed to have fun. However I did not get a sense of 'groupness' in the same way as during the Dance ensemble with my anthropology class on Wednesday. The teaching style on Wednesday was more technical and the steps practiced were harder but the class wasn't as aukward as the night before. It felts like something more towards Webers trancendence idea. Finally Friday night took me to Salsa in the Empire. We arrived late so just had an hours dancing before it closed but in that hour we all spun round the dance floor with several strangers, something we would not have done in a normal club as boundaries were lowered for the night. That hour in the Empire was not enough and we went on to a house party where Salsa tunes were DJed and we danced till morning. As Drid Williams suggests there is something inside us which makes us want to dance.