We pad quietly by the several dozen, streaming through the evening like beings drawn to the Mothership. Down the gravel driveway and everyone is silent. Everything is dark, down away from the lights of the street. “No talking,” reads the sign when we reach the church doors. “Only dancing.”
Inside fuzzy shapes are shuffling, swaying, limbering up to the sound of Loretta Lynn. The very low lights are turned down further as the big space fills up fast. People are in sweats, or jeans and loose t-shirts, trainers or bare feet and shorts. It is dark then, suddenly, and no one is in charge. Somewhere there is a DJ, someone presses play on their device as the volume jumps several notches and the air fills with the familiar, juicy beat of the Jackson Five’s ‘I Want You Back’.
But this isn’t a club, there is no drinking, there’s an unspoken rule that no one will be high. It’s just a huge, cavernous space filled with strangers dancing in the dark. Its appeal is simple and its effect overwhelming. This communing isn’t being held in a church by accident. The tunes segue and the temperature soon rises and if in fumbling while trying to find your way to an exit, you’ll feel the walls are sweating.
No Lights No Lycra is staged in halls and churches around the world, in London, Paris, New York, Shanghai, Glasgow, Los Angeles and Montreal. It began a few years ago one winter night in Fitzroy, Melbourne and word of mouth took it from there. Its website lists local spots and its global network and advises that it “is not about technique and being a ‘good’ dancer, it’s about the experience of dancing with no one watching.”
The pleasures of the good dancer are many. The physical mastery of the self, the seamless joining of body with music. The effortless poise suffused with joy. And above this, the pleasure in being seen, being watched, being admired. The performer’s high in knowing they have impressed and entertained. It is this pleasure that the bad dancer covets, a pleasure vast enough to erase the sorrowful self-conscious shame of having no rhythm.
“No lights” is less strictly enforced down the back, near the bathrooms where some low watt globes glow dimly. Here people sometimes like to stage impromptu performances. Like one week when the bunch of goofy friends re-enacted a scene from Dirty Dancing to the strains of the crowd jumping around and yelling along to ‘Time of My Life’. Or the ballet couple — a man and a woman, unbearably muscled and lithe — their movements fluid and effortless and precise but the music incongruous, the playful toy robot beats of ‘Get Lucky’. The two kids, three or four, with their mother and her long skirt twirling around them, their fists curled in concentration as they stomp around laughing while the lyrics sail over their heads, “I always wanted a good girl. I hate these blurred lines.”
A suburb over from Fitzroy, in Brunswick, we’ll usually opt for a spot halfway down the long church hall, where it’s almost totally dark and crucially, near the kitchen: a big, steel industrial space with miles of cool tiles under our bare feet and an oversized sink in which to run one’s head under the tap then gulp from greedily. The temperature in there drops by at least five degrees. It’s a good place to pick up some tips, to get a crash course run through some steps.
My friend is a dancer down to her bones. Fiddle fit, she isolates and controls each part of her body as though she were a marionette. She busts out moves of impressive complexity while keeping her head straight and high, an easy smile crosses her face while her hands always form delicate, floating shapes, or point to accentuate a turn on the beat, fingers snapping sassily.
I am not like this. To refer to the shapes my body contorts itself into when I attempt to dance as “ungainly” would be charitable. My friend is both patient and encouraging, which is why she is my friend. But she is also a liar when she appraises my lumpen attempts at a simple two-step shuffle with an enthusiastic “Not bad!”
My inability to coordinate my limbs on the dancefloor is to me an inexplicable mystery, as my innate sense of rhythm is impeccable. I spent many years playing drums in rock bands, I have four-way independence between my feet and hands. Shuffles, paradiddles, complex time signatures against the grain – 16/9, 5/4 – all of this came easily to me. It’s been a while now but I can still sit down and play along to almost any record. I say this not to boast, but to illustrate the gaping cognitive gulf I cannot cross when I have to stand up and transfer this skill to my unwilling body.
Lately I have been trying to rectify this character flaw by watching a great deal of tutorial videos on the Internet. I’m careful to always include “beginner” in the search terms, but even with this caveat I just can’t follow the steps. I try and will my body to ape the moves of the instructor, but every time it feels like the strings I’m pulling aren’t attached to me. When I try and practise in front of the mirror, something worse happens: I see that my face contorts in what inwardly is concentration but outwardly looks like I have a mouth full of freshly curdled milk. When there is no mirror my eyes are glued to my feet because if I look up I stumble. And what am I meant to do with my hands? Where do they go? Usually they end up in a weird approximation of claws at the end of crooked elbows.
Do I concentrate too hard to forget myself? Is this approach too cerebral, is not thinking and not caring the secret of the good dancer? Only in part. But of the happy dancer? Yes. Eventually I realise that really nobody is watching, and soon there is nothing but the rhythm and the music so loud and time passing with enraptured quickness. Particularly rousing moments are met with cheers and clapping in time over mid-song breakdowns. It’s over too soon and we are elated and exhausted and I have managed over the hour to make my way towards what is in the least a kind of swaying while moving my feet that is definitely in time.
Press a five-dollar note gratefully into the hands of whoever is manning the door on the way out. It feels like tithing. Whisper, grinning and with a low urgency, ‘Thank you so much.’ No problem, they smile beatifically holding the door open with one hand while putting a finger to their lips with the other. A gentle shake of the head, No talking.
Outside we are stung in the most lovely way by the abrupt cool of the spring air, and the quiet again as the heavy doors shut behind us. Above a streetlight illuminates a sprinkler dousing the yard of a cottage. Still whispering, we say we hope that thing will be running come summer.
