Lockdown! at the Disco #28: The Shake-It-Off Episode
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However you’re feeling right now, find your beat – and just shake those feelings down into it, honey…
TRACK ONE: “Dance, Dance, Dance” – Lykke Li
Hiya folks! And welcome to another episode of Comics Youth Radio presents Lockdown! at the Disco. This is episode #28 of this show, which is a terrifying number to be perfectly honest, and I am your host Amy Roberts – and I’m a terrifying woman, if I’m being perfectly honest - especially when I’m busting a move on the dancefloor!
And I say that because this is The Shake it Off Episode where we’re going to be celebrating the cathartic qualities of having a good boogie! We’ll also be playing a bunch of tushy-shake worthy bops all about dancing. Opening the show there was “Dance, Dance, Dance” by Lykke Li from her gorgeous 2008 debut album Youth Novels.
And this theme has been a long time coming, truth to be told. Dancing is one of my natural states – and one of my fave things to do for just helping me vibe to my emotions. Whether they be good or bad, up or down, celebratory or sad as heck – I love and have always loved to just strut those feelings out.
Over the past One Hundred Years of Solitude – which is my new name for lockdown – I’ve really been reminded of how therapeutic dancing is and how good it is not just for your body but also for the mind.
When we talk about dancing, it’s usually within the context of a group activity – that it’s a non-verbal communication you do to music and often with a community that you feel comfortable and included within. And that’s awesome and dancing within this kind of structure can be life affirming and beautiful – some of my favourite memories come from times where I’ve found my people whilst dancing to a few good tunes – but dancing can also be something to be enjoyed solo too.
In fact, I greatly encourage you all to do so! I’ve been dancing a lot on my own in my little one bedroom flat throughout lockdown and it always leaves me feeling wonderful. When I dance to a song that I’m really vibing with, I feel connected to that tune and I feel as though I’m in direct communication with the song too. Like my body is moving in conversation with the music.
On my absolute worst days – and we’ve all had them over the past year – dancing has simultaneously given me a vacation from myself and also given me the space to get myself together and organise my head a little. I shake it off and shake it out.
And if you’re alone and fancy a raucous boogie, then I highly recommend you attempt all of this to this next track right now. This is The Rapture with “Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks”- don’t forget to shake it, honey…
TRACK TWO: “Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks” – The Rapture
TRACK THREE: “Heads Will Roll” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
That was “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and it’s a huge butt shaker of a tune, obviously, but some of the lyrics are also evocative of that weird historic social phenomena of dance mania. It’s one of my fave weird tales and though it’s been widely explored by various smart folk who should be able to get to bottom of such a mystery, it remains an unexplained phenomena – and a deeply fascinating one at that!
So, dancing mania – also known as the dancing plague – was a phenomenon that primarily happened in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries and it involved groups of people dancing almost unconsciously and erratically en-masse, sometimes thousands at a time, until people collapsed from exhaustion.
These episodes of mass hysteria tended to take place during times of great hardship, and there remains debate as to whether these occurrences were spontaneous or organised in some way.
The mania was poorly understood and nobody really knew how to remedy it beyond guesswork. Sometimes musicians even accompanied the dancers due to a belief that music could treat the mania – which sounds a little like the Tory approach to solving issues by pouring petrol onto a roaring fire – and obviously this tactic sometimes backfired because it just encouraged more people to join in.
To this day scholars still aren’t sure as to what the cause of dancing mania was, but several theories postulate that people may have danced to relieve themselves of stress concerning the poverty of the time. Other theories speculate that dance mania may have been a mass psychogenic illness – which basically means a sickness with no physical symptoms which affects a group of people based on social influence.
Please be sure to update your 2020 bingo cards with ‘dancing plague’ because who knows what this year has left in store for us! And I think we can all agree that some mass dancing would probably be the best-case scenario weird event for this year to end on.
It is really interesting that this phenomenon happened during times of crisis and hardship, because there is something extremely cathartic and unifying about dancing – and we’ll be getting more into the psychological benefits of dance a little later – but there’s also something extremely significant about the power of music during times like this too.
When everything is hard, sometimes you just have to turn your jams up real loud and move your body to it however you need to. As this next song says, Nothing else matters when I turn it up loud. This is “Speakers Push the Air” by Pretty Girls Make Graves.
TRACK FOUR: “Speakers Push the Air” – Pretty Girls Make Graves
TRACK FIVE: “Dance Steps” – The Natural History
That was “Dance Steps” by The Natural History which uses the metaphor of dancing and of learning and practicing dance steps for a major event as a great metaphor for preparing yourself for big things in life.
This is kind of something we talk about a lot at Comics Youth – the idea that all of us are constantly creating and improving as we continue to create. I think all of us, no matter what our craft or hobbies are, set unrealistic expectations for ourselves to be brilliant at it right away and to not make many mistakes as we go.
We can expect perfection from ourselves every time we make something, and when we don’t measure up to those expectations we place on ourselves – or maybe the work and people we unfairly compare ourselves and our work to – it can make us feel like giving up.
So this is just our routine reminder that the process is just as important as the outcome. This is important not just for creating art or writing or crafts or whatever else your hobby may be, but also for life as well. Growth requires missteps and mistakes. It demands failure and for us to acknowledge and learn from that failure in order to level up a little more and do better next time around.
Learning your dance steps and practicing them is just as, if not more important, than how you eventually perform them for whatever important event you’re building them up to.
Never stop practicing. And never let those missteps ruin your groove. This is the classic “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn.
TRACK SIX: “Dancing On My Own” – Robyn
TRACK SEVEN: “D.A.N.C.E” – Justice
That was D.A.N.C.E by Justice. I once see these guys perform live at a music festival in Belgium a million years ago now and I remember being super disappointed by them. It was one of those shows where you keep waiting for the beat to finally drop and for things to really kick off so you can throw your shapes out fully – and it just didn’t arrive. It felt like they only really played three songs the whole set and all three would just build up and build up, hit a brief climax and then move on to the next build up.
I just remember standing there with my mates and we were all doing – and the whole crowd was to be honest – this awkward kind of shuffle dance to all the build up. And we just never really stopped, we wanted to go big. But the music just wasn’t allowing it.
But anyway, that songs an absolute jam. And “We Are Your Friends” by them and Simian is also a huge tune which we’ll probably play at some point real soon.
Speaking of awkward shuffles, I wanted to celebrate the art of bad dancing. Because something I hear all the time from several friends – usually, and I mean no shade here, my cis-gender, hetero male friends – is that they can’t dance so they usually sit out and abstain from dancing on nights out.
And that makes me super sad because everyone can dance. There’s this weird misconception that you have to have rhythm and timing and grace to earn your place on a dancefloor and that’s just nonsense. There’s nothing I love more on a dancefloor than seeing somebody who maybe doesn’t have great rhythm or timing or grace – heck knows, grace is in short supply in this house - still going for it on a dancefloor and just losing themselves to a song that they love, with people they feel a vibe with.
There’s something really beautiful about not being the standard or doing the default, and just owning that and celebrating it and doing it anyways. The greatest thing you will ever learn is to simply not care what people think about you with things like this: If it brings you even the slightest bit of happiness to do, then do it. Let loose. Life is too short and other people’s judgements – or, as is usually the case, your perception of other people’s judgement of you – are so insignificant in the broad scheme of things.
In our Safe Spaces group this week I asked everyone what tunes give them the uncontrollable urge to dance and Rosa told us Kiwi by Harry Styles is one of her main jams for such a thing while Bell told us that Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Dexy’s “Come On Eileen” always make them feel like they simply have to dance which for them, “is usually just jumping up and down” or nodding their head.
It’s still a groove, my friend! And those are all undeniable dance mania tunes! This next one was requested by Tom, and it’s another one of those songs which has the irresistible power of making the listener want to boogie.
This is “1, 2 Step” by Ciara and Missy Elliott.
TRACK EIGHT: “1, 2 Step” – Ciara, Missy Elliott
TRACK NINE: “Ready For The Floor” – Hot Chip
That was the sublime “Ready For The Floor” by Hot Chip, which I’ve long embraced as being a queer disco anthem because of that line in it where he sings, “You’re my number one guy” – so imagine my crushing disappointing when I discovered Hot Chip are all straight boys. Ah well. I refuse to relinquish its queer disco trophy!
Before we start wrapping up today, I wanted to talk about the incredible psychological benefits of dance. There have been a lot of studies done into the neuroscience of dancing which have uncovered evidence that dancing can have incredible benefits for the parts of your brain that deal with cognitive and emotional function.
In 2018, for example, one study from the University of Helsinki made the discovery that the brain of a professional dancer differs from that of the average layperson and even well-trained musicians, with them able to better synchronise the sort of memory and emotion processes that are central to interpersonal interaction and self-understanding.
When dancing as part of a group – which admittedly is something we still might not be able to do freely for a little while yet, but it’s coming folks! Hang tight! – done on a regular basis as part of a group, dance can actually change the way we think and interact with one another.
The leader of that particular study Hanna Poikonen wrote in a 2017 article, QUOTE: “In dance, the basic elements of humanity combine in a natural way. It combines creative art, fine-tuned movement and collaboration, much like playing music. The movement involves the whole body, like in sports … studies on producing music and movement show how during cooperation, the brains of two people become attuned to the same frequency. This is apparent in how the low-frequency brain waves of the participants become synchronised.
Brain Synchronisation enables seamless cooperation, and is necessary for creating both harmonic music and movement. The ability to become attuned to another person’s brain frequency is essential for the function of an empathetic community.” END QUOTE.
Poikenen is also optimistic that due to the growing evidence of neurological benefits of dance, that dancing could be used as a holistic form of therapy to lessen the symptoms of mood disorders and neurodiversity issues.
So, until we can all dance together again – at least give yourself the time and space to dance on your own. It might just help you to feel a little better.
And now, this is Lucy Dacus with her gorgeous cover of Bruce Springstein’s “Dancing In The Dark”.
TRACK TEN: “Dancing in the Dark” – Lucy Dacus
TRACK ELEVEN: “Just You and Me Dancing” – Moloko
That was Moloko bringing us to the end of our episode with “Just You and Me Dancing”. Thanks ever so much for hanging out with this lonely broad and I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and maybe busted a couple of sick moves along the way with me. Be sure to tell your pals to pop by and listen to me sometime, eh?
Our next episode is gonna see us waving a firm goodbye to the Autumn and saying hello to Winter with The Winter Episode. For that I want all of your fave winter tunes – not xmas ones tho, no festive tunes just yet – just your crispy, cool cosy songs about winter please.
I also want to know what your fave things to eat and do in the winter are! What makes you feel wintery and nice? Let me know via amy@comicsyouth.co.uk, or alternately if you’re part of our Safe Spaces Discord channel then feel free to holla at your girl in there instead and tell me all about it.
Until next time pals, remember: Everything is not cool, but it can be. Stay safe, stay sassy, and stay dancing. This is David Bowie with “Let’s Dance” and this is Amy Roberts signing off.
Byeeeeee!
TRACK TWELVE: “Let’s Dance” – David Bowie