Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor by Emma Warren

Author:Emma Warren [Warren, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571340347
Amazon: B0B6YZLDYG
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2023-03-14T07:00:00+00:00

The dance reflects and provides for the collective times, but it also reflects and provides for the individual. A number of things were happening when I first started going to clubs, which may have amplified my need for movement. My dad was becoming increasingly disabled. Tissue growing on his spine was shutting down the nerve pathways that convey information around the body, causing loss of strength and, therefore, movement. He’d have major spinal surgery on more than 20 occasions. The operations would provide a temporary pause in the losses, but they required lengthy recovery times and a long haul back to what was already a diminished position, strength-wise. This regular peril of surgery and the everyday slog of physical disappointment took a toll on him and the rest of the family. He was a remarkable person whose tenacity and generous encouragement was a refutation of the deficit model of disability. His physical weakness generated huge reserves of determination. However, anyone who has lived with a disabled parent will understand the cost of coping. Unwell adults can be understandably volatile, especially ones going through a marriage breakdown. Me and my siblings absorbed our family’s reality in a variety of ways, sharing the idea that we were loved and that illness was part of life, but experiencing the ramifications in our own ways.

The realities of our family situation required a different stance depending on the location and context. Inside the family home, there’s a need to see and not see: I see that I am cutting up your food, or helping you get dressed, or brushing your hair (badly), but I can’t be entirely in myself when I’m doing it because these tasks require separation. A teenage daughter is not supposed to help a father pull on his trousers. This teenage daughter has to help this father pull on his trousers, and to do so requires a certain kind of dissociation – probably on both sides. I stood in a certain way if we were out. Not just because my dad would probably tell me not to slouch, but as a kind of brace against looks and comments. Holding or tensing up body parts – armouring,14 as it would be described by therapeutic professionals – can be a useful way to contain emotions, striking new adaptive shapes in the face of difficult events. My need for movement increased in tandem with his decreasing strength.

Luckily this coincided with a cultural moment that took place in nightclubs, warehouses and (for some people) fields, and I danced my way through the trouble. This meant that I was at a few important beginnings and endings, including the last night of an already famous club called Shoom,15 by then taking place on a Wednesday night at the Park in Kensington. I’d applied for a membership card on a previous visit, which meant I was on the mailing list for the club newsletter. A letter announcing the final night came through the front door while I was getting ready for school one morning in early November 1989.

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