Grieving the dance

So often, when I go out in my city, London, I find myself grieving what the dance once was whilst attempting a two step. In this online age, I fear in so many spaces we have lost what it means to truly party.

Not to be the person that looks back on raves with rose tinted glasses (she says as she does just that), but in the era of the pre-2016 rave, the party space was completely disconnected from the outside world. For a number of hours, nothing beyond you, the bass, and the warehouse existed. You wouldn’t dare post the pictures on instagram (if you even had any), because in the moment you didn’t care what you looked like. You were in a tracksuit, sweating, and dancing for 10 hours.

Perhaps I’m being too nostalgic, but I know for a fact we were committed to movement. Committed to enjoyment, and dance. Existing in the safety of being unseen, moving with strangers without spectacle. It was intimate.

Now, when I go out, I feel the weight of being perceived. The dance floor no longer feels like a place to disappear, but a space to be witnessed. Phones hover at eye level consistently, and movement feels cautious. I dance, but I am aware of myself dancing. A performance rather than a release.

In a space where I once danced freely, I now feel curated as I move, so aware of the angles and evidence of myself I may see splayed across the internet.

There was something so radical about the anonymity and togetherness we used to feel at parties. There was a relief in not being legible, we just danced amongst each other without fear of being observed.

Maybe this grief is less about the past and more about what feels increasingly rare: spaces that allow us to exist without an audience. Where the dance is not proofed or archived. Where enjoyment hasn’t been commodified for brands, it simply exists because it does. Where the dance is enough.

And yet, every so often, in the right room, at the right time, it returns. The lights are low enough, the bass high enough, and the crowd desperate to recede from the outside world. Bodies in a room, allowing themselves to release. A type of freedom so rare.

A memory made in the body, not the archive.