I’m in trouble again. It’s dance’s turn in the spotlight.
I was born in the 60s, grew up in the 70s and matured in the 80s. When you say the word “dance” to me, the immediate mental picture is something like the one above.
Yeah.
However, the schlok factor doesn’t necessarily make the decade’s dancing bad. Face it, the Latin Hustle isn’t for the faint of heart or the less coordinated among us.
70s dance, especially when associated with disco, has experienced something of a revival in recent years. While we all loved to hate on the 70s during the 80s (and the 90s, and the 00s…), the decade wasn’t without it’s moments, and dance was one of them. In addition to the Latin Hustle, there was the Hustle (the original one), the Bus Stop, various versions of the Slide and innumerable other ones I don’t remember. At it’s best, 70s disco dance was reminiscent of 40 Swing dancing.
At it’s worst it was…
There were other sorts of dance happening in the 70s as well. If you were around the original Punk scene, it was Mosh and the Pogo. Neither required much finesse, but they took a lot of physical energy, which was supplied by a variety of means we’d best leave undiscussed. I don’t think this dance qualifies as art-well, performance art, maybe-but you can’t talk about the 70s and leave it out. Subculture though it was, it is a subculture that is still going on today.
Not much technique involved, but they made up for it with energy and blood.
I hope this has brought a smile, or at least a face palm, to you. I’ll leave you with…
If you’re not aware of it, Fine Art Tuesday was started by Eaton Rapids Joe, a Michigan blogger and purveyor of good survival information and some well-thought out fiction. He started Fine Art Tuesday as a tribute to Ol’ Remus, late proprietor of The Woodpile Report. I picked up the idea from him. Remus posted once a week, on Tuesdays. He began every post with a piece of fine art and some comments on it and the artist. I’m not nearly so good at it; I have the soul of an engineer, not an artist. I don’t have the experience Remus obviously had with art, but I’m getting some excellent on-the-job training by doing these posts.
Remus could sum up all that needed to be said in a paragraph, perhaps two. Me, I just ramble about and hope to make a good point or two. Joe is better at it than I, and his Fine Art Tuesday posts are always worth reading.
