House Dance History

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.

In a city that has instigated hostile laws to control the actual clubs, Underground clubs are defined more by what takes place inside. Underground clubs (as the name suggests) seek to stay under the radar. If someone wants to find the best club party, they have to actively seek information about when and where that might be occurring, which heightens the aura of being secretive and exclusive to a special group of people.

Davy Crockett’s supposed autobiography (it was probably ghost written), An Account of Colonel Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East, offers a lively description of an 1835 dance hall in New York City’s colorful ghetto of poverty, The Five Points -- now situated near the city and state courthouses and One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan. At its southern tip, Manhattan island narrows, and Five Points was almost in the middle, surrounded on three sides by water. The great sailing ships were berthed so close to each other that a sailor (or thief) could hop from one ship to another. Sailors from all over the world spilled out into the surrounding Five Points, seeking liquor, women, music and dancing -- making Five Points the hotbed of dance invention.