- FileFlames, not dance moves, have become the mark of approval.
Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter
IT IS Friday night and, after an evening of Karaoke, you take yourself into the Jonkanoo Lounge for the 'Cat's Meow'.
There are quite a few young people packed into the room, especially women, since they get in free. The music is booming and everybody seems to have formed a square which they all face. It seems obvious that this square must be the dance floor.
So, it would seem safe to conclude that some intense dancing that has caused everyone to stop their own dancing and watch must be going on.
So, eagerly, you make your way to the front of this barely moving square to see this vision of wondrous dance skill that is holding everyone hostage.
When you get there, you realise that your assumption was wrong.
The square is empty.
This seems to be the way of dances in today's dancehall.
While the situation above describes the club experience, a similar situation seems to be taking place in dances. The crowds do not gather around a particular dance floor, but there is considerably more standing around (bottle of champagne in hand) than dancing.
Dancing is slowly being eclipsed as 'posing' takes over. The persons who fill dancehalls can often be seen, 'flossin' and blingin', but they can rarely be seen dancing.
This exists to the point where, in any given club, the dance floor is the last place to be filled with people. Rather than going willingly to the floor to dance, patrons seem to have to be forced there by the sheer power of numbers.
This trend seems to be strange in a musical form which is very rhythm driven and is therefore geared toward dancing.
Additionally, one would assume that a genre or venue named dancehall would actually have dancing in it.
Additionally, there have also been a myriad of dances that have come and gone over the years.
A list of the dances that have moved through the dancehall years it has existed would include names such as the butterfly, water pumpi, shoulder move, cool and deadly, bogle, tattie, heel and toe, sketel, della move and, of course, the indomitable one foot skank, just to name a few.
Furthermore, the ease with which the rhythms urge one to dance seems to be drawing foreigners to the music.
During their visit to the island last year, editors of Riddim, Germany's first reggae magazine, pointed out that Germany's youth are drawn to the genre because of its participatory nature. They argued that while hip-hop called for posing, at a dancehall event everybody danced.Nonetheless, the increasingly archaic notion of going out to dance has not yet completely disappeared. Individuals and small groups who 'drop a leg' can still be found.
Additionally, the fact that dances continue to be invented suggests that there is still some room for dancing in the dancehall. However, the rent-a-tilers tend to dominate any given gathering.
Even the very dances have during some point mimicked the trend toward posing rather than dancing. Moves like the 'tatie', the pop, the collar and others demonstrate the 'pose', simply done to the rhythm being played.
Coupled with the lack of dancing is the lack of couples dancing. In fact, this trend has got to the stage where, when the slow segment of the evening begins, the floor is almost completely cleared.
In fact, at one dance, having had enough of this trend, a well-known selector got the crowd to stay on the floor by announcing, prior to starting the slow section, that anyone who did not continue to dance was a homosexual.
The trend has been noticed and has increasingly brought criticism, even at gatherings where they were not originally the topic of debate.
It even made its way to the Caribbean Music Expo 2002. During the panel discussion, 'Don't Turn off the Sound...Do I Want to Disturb My Neighbour?'
Dennis Howard, one of the six panel members, explained that, instead of dancing, 'blinging' had taken over the dancehall.
However, Mutabaruka gave a response which might very well explain why people no longer dance or at least tend to do so separately. He stated that when couples dancing ruled, so did the "c--k stand".
One young woman quickly agreed that she shared this sentiment. She argued that she was glad to be able to go out and dance without "every dibbi-dibbi bwoi wan come beg yuh a dance nuh, an a rub up pon yuh".
Whatever the reason, dancing seems to be getting quite a fight in what is slowly becoming the 'watchhall', rather than the dancehall.
