This one starts with some unsuccessful dance lessons.
I went to ballet classes as a kid, standard stuff, although I felt clumsy and uncoordinated next to the others. But still, girls go to dance classes, right? Let’s try Scottish Dancing. Maybe less dainty than ballet, but still requiring coordination. Also not successful. Family lore has it that I couldn’t get the hang of skipping. Skipping! OK then, how about modern dance? More free, but I still got told I was doing it wrong.
Dancing maybe not for me then.
Let’s zoom forward a few years to school discos. Awkward dancing in a circle until the inevitable slow dance. Couples gravitate towards each other to sway together, girls a whole foot taller than the boys. My best mate has her first snog to Martine McCutcheon’s ‘Perfect Moment’.
Our natural progression was to underage clubbing, fuelled by alcopops and booze stolen from our parents. We’d go to the local nightclub and dance in a frenzy to the same playlist each week; an eclectic mix of 90s dance bangers, rock classics and, inexplicably, the Baywatch theme tune. We danced with abandon, spilling our drinks and tripping over our feet in too-big heels. Cigarettes held high in the air (inside!). Crushes snogged under the strobes and secrets exchanged in the toilets. Strong foundations of friendship forged on the dance floor.
This was the time of Cristina Aguilera and Destiny’s Child, and we wanted to look hot when we danced. We chose our outfits carefully via the sale rack at Pilot and our big sisters’ wardrobes – a sophisticated mix of lycra, lace and denim layered with rhinestones, diamantes and glitter. We woke up to the telltale stains of vomit mixed with lurid red snakebite and late-night kebab.
We danced with abandon, spilling our drinks and tripping over our feet in too-big heels. Cigarettes held high in the air (inside!). Crushes snogged under the strobes and secrets exchanged in the toilets. Strong foundations of friendship forged on the dance floor.
But let’s stop the rose-tinted nostalgia for a minute. Dancing also meant an unwanted hand as you moved through a crowd. Bum pinched when you waited at the bar. A too-close stranger grinds behind you on the dance floor, and is expertly shuffled to the side by your friends – your synchronised dancing protectors – in a classic manoeuvre that works 85% of the time. Things happened that we didn’t speak about. This was the noughties after all.
Then, the rave years. Underage clubbing swiftly followed by legal clubbing with illegal substances. The indie sleaze, uni glory days of MDMA – a tenner to get in then dancing for 10 hours straight. We were nocturnal beings, our days short and our nights limitless.
Dancing was what defined my youth. Joyful, carefree, sticky-floored dancing.
The years go by and dancing becomes secondary to everything else; something only possible after a drink or three. But it gets harder to just have three drinks. Too easy to have five, or eight, or accidentally pull an all-nighter. Then things get blurry. What did I get up to last night, did I dance? I think I wanted to dance. Music and dancing – once so central to my social life – take a back seat. We make plans that never materialise, stay at the pub, back to a mate’s house. The club’s too much effort anyway.
I get chatting to someone at a party who shares their plans for the following morning, a mere four hours away. They’re going to a sober morning rave. “You should try it”, they say, “it’s fun”. I shudder. The shift from raving, cocooned by substances and dark rooms, to dancing sober on a Sunday morning is too big to get my head around. Dancing sober is awkward, sincere and not for this sarcastic, eye-rolling child of the 90s. I know that trying hard and being earnest is deeply embarrassing.
What did I get up to last night, did I dance? I think I wanted to dance
But I’m also curious. How does it work? Is everyone still up from the night before? Surely they dim the lights, at least?
I didn’t go that Sunday but it planted a seed. The pandemic years had left me restless and itchy for change and, by 2025, I was bored of my usual excuses: “I’m too busy”, “it’s too early”, “it might be embarrassing.” Curiosity triumphed. Fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen?
So, here we are. 10am. Sunlight is streaming through the school hall windows and it smells of assembly. I’m relieved I don’t recognise anyone.
The music starts. No dimmed lights or dry ice to hide behind. No drinks or substances. Just banging tunes, a flashback to my 20s, and the realisation that dancing was always the main event. It just got buried under everything else.
At first I'm self conscious, trying to remember how my limbs feel, thinking about what I look like to others. I watch everyone else. I try closing my eyes and focusing on the music. I tentatively stretch my arms out further, exploring the space.
It feels ludicrous that a group of adults should be allowed to behave this way, whooping and bounding about, so un-adultlike.
I lose track of time, swirling around and stomping and shouting and shaking my hips. It feels ludicrous that a group of adults should be allowed to behave this way, whooping and bounding about, so un-adultlike.
Midway through the set, through the thumping techno, the facilitator asks the question that stays with me for 2025:
‘Is there anything you could do to take yourself a bit less seriously?’
My first morning rave set off a chain of events where I’d dance sober – gigs, festivals, weddings. I became one of those people who said “you should try it, it’s fun” at parties.
I admit, dancing won't make you money and it won’t optimise your time. If anything, dancing while cooking will make you slower.
But dancing in the kitchen is the best. And dancing is joyful. It can be as silly or as earnest or as embarrassing as you want it to be. You get to choose.
Somewhere along the way I forgot how to dance.
But in 2025 in that assembly hall, surrounded by sweaty strangers all going for it like it was a 3am set at Fabric, I stopped thinking about what other people were thinking, or how I was dancing, or if I was doing it properly, and I just danced. I’d learned how to take myself a bit less seriously.