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In This Issue

• The Spec's Front Page (PDF)
• Matthew Fox Strips Naked, Insults Graduates
• Krishna vs. Christianity
• Last Book of Potter Pilfered, Rowling "Shocked"
• Secret Society No Longer Secret to Sniffer-Outers of Secrecy
• New York's Preschools Seek Swingset Leaders
• Bitches Got the Right to Shut the Fuck Up
• Before They Were Great Quotations
• An Inconvenient Truth Is Unsafe at Any Speed
• Spectator Copy Editor Shares Typical Evening
• Dancing Tops Crappy American Exports to UK
• Columbia Spectator: Op-Eds (PDF)
• Spec Staff Editorial: What the Fuck, Man
• Spec Sexportations: Delivering Our Children
• Spec PERSPECTIVES: Importance of History
• Spec: Corrections
• Spec: Letters to the Editor
• Prezbo v. Hamiltron
• THEY Watch

Whilst I have been grappling, in vain to find the shocking dissimilarities between my culture and yours, various suggestions have been made by English folk and Yanks alike. A friend naïvely thought that a comparison of British and American comedy would be sufficiently interesting and even-handed, but we all know that British comedy has been kicking your Will Ferrell-embroidered arse for at least the last thirty years. An English friend, frustrated and bemused by my constant use of “dubtay,” “crunchy.” and “legitimate” proposed an analysis of slang choices, but I feared that that might become bare erudite, blud. Indeed, the subject of this article snuck up on me, literally, and started grinding with me from behind. Yes, we are going to talk about dancing. Are you standing in a dark club, wearing a short skirt, a wife beater, and hoop earrings? Good, then I’ll begin.

Suffice it to say that this comparison is not particularly well-researched or fair. In London, my friends and I generally frequent indie electro-pop nightclubs, and the party playlists start with the Beach Boys, hit up the Shins, Aqua, Lil’ John, Dead Prez, Sonic Youth, Michael Jackson, and errything in between that’s sufficiently nostalgic or ironic. Indeed, it is the irony and smug knowingness that dictates what’s acceptable and what’s not. I may be a JAP with a love of Yeats, but that only makes Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” all the more alluring. Conversations about Baudelaire shouted above Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” make us feel all warm, intellectual and ‘90s inside. The mantra is juxtaposition, juxtaposition, juxtaposition, and the latest trend of nu-rave sees private-school boys squeezing into white skinny-jeans with neon accessories and dancing the night away in acidic, trippy discos filled with P.R. wankers, nu-blipsters (a.k.a. black hipsters) and their school teachers. In the words of that amazing Disney World ride, it’s a small world after all, at least where the London clubbing scene is concerned.

But this is not the main point; whilst you may envy us our subculture-hopping, class-tourist proclivities, we are all in truth absolutely shit-scared of physical contact with one another. Unfortunately, it is time for me to reinforce a British stereotype that continues to thrive: that of the sexually-repressed, stiff-upper-lipped lady or gentleman. We may be living out Martin Luther King’s dream in the dance halls of Old Street, where the mash-ups dictate Bhangra, followed by Notorious B.I.G. vs. Coldplay D.J. sets, but in reality we are as physically segregated as the buses, water fountains, and soda shops of yore—not that this segregation is based on race, creed, gender, or any other prejudice; we are all simply individuals, flailing our limbs jauntily. If there is anyone touching, it will be a couple, who might be romantically waltzing as an ironic, knowing allusion to the days when such dancing was de rigeur.

This differs drastically from my experience of the dancing on this side of the Atlantic. Whilst I have yet to frequent an indie club downtown (anyone want to go with me? Please?) I have experienced a mixed bag of music styles, yet the dancing is curiously one-tone. Anything with a vaguely hip-hop–ish beat or R&B influence is code for “find a girl, grab her hips, breathe down her neck and rotate your crotch furiously behind her”; it doesn’t matter what your gender is, hell, girl-on-girl is condoned and celebrated, I’m sure as a sign of sexually liberated feminism. Deviation from this music normally includes something catering to a taste for nostalgia, so we can all bunch our fists, squeeze our eyes shut meaningfully, and sing along. But, where are the Arcade Fire, Buck 65, and The Postal Service sprightly knees-up I was expecting? “Shut up, this is college; time to get crunk.”  

At first I naively believed that this was simply the way things were. I say Tomahto, you say Get that ass to the floor, but then I stumbled across an article in the Guardian, relating all these different and exciting dance styles from the U.S. that are currently two-stepping their way across the Atlantic. Trends like Hyphy, Clown Walk, and the Toe Wop (a hybrid of the Harlem Shake and the Wop) hailing from L.A., Chicago, and even our fair city of New York. It may be that I have simply not been casting my net far enough into the boogie-down Bronx or the heart of Brooklyn to witness these styles, but their existence, as well as the renaissance of classic dance styles of the ‘70s, does fill my heart with hope. Indeed, as far as college is concerned, the ubiquity of Step teams—a phenomenon entirely unheard of in Britain—does indicate that the youth want new moves and take an active interest in dancing that doesn’t necessitate the co-mingling of two people’s sweat. In fact, the Guardian article also cited the provenance of Ironic Indie Dancing as OK GO, Beck, and Weezer, meaning that the style us Brits have embraced with stiff, awkward arms as our own was really an American trend—albeit one that got so low on the floor that it was squashed by an army of Reebok-clad feet.

What I’m trying to say is Let’s learn from each other! To repeat and slightly distort Disney World’s adage, we can make it a small world after all.  The extremes of British indie style and dirrrty American grinding aren’t satisfying anyone (if they are satisfying you, you really shouldn’t be dancing that close). So here’s my proposition: let’s learn the new moves; take them to bars, clubs, and frat parties; and fuse them with the discomfited, flippy motions of the London indie kids, whilst simultaneously seeing how low we can go.  Liquid popping formal ballroom bootyliciousness? Sounds like a new trend.