Dancing: Improvisation

by Sally Sommer

What keeps the floor alive and dancers alert are the improvised dialogues of movement that define the vibe. Interactions arise then disappear throughout the evening.  They can be as simple as an exchange between the music and a dancer or maybe just two people dancing or as big and rambunctious as a circle of dancers in competition.  But whether the relationship lasts only a few minutes or has been in place for many years, on the floor they are based on play and improvisational inventions. It is manifested in acute attentiveness, the excitement of recognition when one dancer gets “topped,” then retaliates by topping one better.

At a good House party, the dancers maintain a sense of individuation, observation, and engage in convivial competitions, which produces extremely sophisticated and varied dancing. Good dancing is thrilling physical virtuosity and smart improvised playfulness – but it can also be extremely serious. Some of the club dancers worship when dawn comes up on Sunday mornings and they are still inside dancing; this is when the DJ decides to spin some “gospel-House” mixes. When his father died, Archie Burnett escaped to the club and the solace of dancing as a way of working through loss. Brian “Footwork” Green and friends danced hard in order to remember, to save their lives and not kill, when a friend got shot for his jacket. “Without dancing and the club there would have been a lot of violence that night,” Green says (Brian Green, video interview with author, November, 23, 1996). Conrad “SP” Rochester memorializes the dead in his dancing. “I took their moves…and changed them up in my own little way.  And when I do those moves, it’s the way I show my love for them…to let them know we are still out there rockin’ for them and the dance, and to let them know that their spirit is still strong, and will never die” (Conrad “SP” Rochester, video interview with author, July 31, August 1, 1993)