In which I get worked up abt dancing

I got a stuck on this Letterman performance last night. Right around 1:05, when Robyn twists her hands upwards like she’s demonstrating a DNA helix, something happens. Her body starts to hear the music and Robyn begins to move differently, as if she’s perfectly happy to sing but would really rather just drop the mic and go for it. (You will notice the parts where she gets to do just that.)

I can’t remember the last time I saw someone who danced like they really fucking love to dance. I don’t know if Robyn used any choreography; let’s assume a few moves were predetermined because she was taping for television, and you get maybe two takes for a show like Letterman’s. Doesn’t matter—Robyn looks like she might might choose dancing over being a pop star, and that’s not a feeling I often get when watching a pop star dance. (She wouldn’t make that choice, but suggesting that possibility is more than enough.)

This led to an old loop: do people dance now? When we were babies, we’d go to Madame Rosa’s or Hotel Amazon or Danceteria. Groups, couples, whatever. I know how drastically club culture has changed, so it may be impossible to do what we did. But I was at a bar in Williamsburg recently where a DJ was playing tons of hard, James-like funk records, and the only person who was dancing was a very LOOK-AT-ME breakdancing dude. Two girls sorta went for it, but talked and texted the whole time they were moving.

I want to do more than post a Goodie Mob song. I need to know whether or not youngs want to go out and dance. Is this urge simply no longer part of the default social settings? Is dancing confined to openly self-identifying groups of Dancing People? My cohort was a bunch of artsy New York kids. We weren’t hardcore discoheads who went out at night in an organized fashion with outfits and routines. We also did all the other dumb shit people still do: go to the beach, get wasted, see movies, go to openings, eat at cheap restaurants, sit in the park.