Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor
Emma Warren, Faber
A dyed-in-the-wool clubber, Warren knows of what she speaks when it comes to the dancefloor: there is a lot of personal reminiscence in the endlessly fascinating Dance Your Way Home. But there’s also science, wide-ranging sociocultural history – folk dancing at Cecil Sharp House coexists with the rise of dubstep; Chicago footwork with the jazz-inspired ban on dancing in 1930s Ireland – and, more unexpectedly, a righteously angry polemical bent. Warren’s formative clubbing experiences were in the 80s and 90s, a golden era, simply because there were more venues. Clubs and youth spaces have since been decimated by councils and property developers, in a culture that, as Warren puts it, “fetishizes youth but doesn’t seem to like youth much”. She makes a compelling argument that dancing – and having the space to dance – matters: “You must let go of self-consciousness, embarrassment, pride and prejudice and embrace what you actually have.”
