Dance Dance Revolution
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Moulin Rouge Las Vegas ... NIGHT: INSURGENCIES unincorporated townships Never Tires of, ‘What’s Your are a designation “originally Sign?’” Las Vegas Weekly, authorized to assist in the 9 June 2008, http://www. conveyance of land and are lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/ commonly thought of as a the-playground/2008/jun/09/ rural form of government willis-never-tires-whats-your- Dance Dance with limited power.” This sign. designation is typically 19 The Misunderstood reserved for rural areas Legend, dir. Armstrong and where a governing body Lipsman. cannot adequately provide 20 Earnest Bracey, “Moulin municipal services like garbage Rouge,” interview by Joe Revolution collection, sewage, and Schoenmann, KNPR’s State of electricity. According to the Nevada, Nevada Public Radio, 2010 U.S. Census, Paradise 20 July 2009. has grown to become the 21 “Lido at the Stardust,” most populous unincorporated UNLV Digital Collections, township in the United States, http://digital.library.unlv. continually challenging its edu/collections/showgirls/ DJ Zhao aggressively to shut off the music. I switched status as an informal city. lido-stardust. off the sound and threw my arms around my Clark and Sharp also note that 22 Eugene P. Moehring and “unincorporated townships Michael S. Green, Las Vegas: “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be equipment, because it looked like they were have grown so large that they A Centennial History (Reno: Part of Your Revolution” about to smash everything. Protestors tried to are functional equivalents University of Nevada Press, of cities, providing a broad 2005), 137. –Attributed to Emma Goldman stop them, a few fights broke out, and some range of services beyond their 23 The Misunderstood were arrested, as I packed up and got the hell original ‘rural’ responsibilities.” Legend, dir. Armstrong and The unincorporated township, Lipsman. “Music is a weapon, a real weapon, in a out of there. once a state of economic and 24 Ibid. concrete sense.” This experience made one thing very political exception, has since 25 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious morphed into an acceptable New York: A Retroactive –Desmond Tutu1 clear to me: the most dangerous thing in the form of city building with Manifesto for Manhattan (New eyes of the police was dancing. But why? essential services offloaded to York: The Monacelli Press), 135. the county level of governance. 26 Moehring, Resort City, “Dancing is the remedy of resistance, In 186 B.C., 7,000 members of the cult Modelling themselves after 184. the art of the marginalized and of Dionysus were imprisoned, tortured, and Paradise as a precedent of 27 Ibid., 180. smaller government and greater 28 Keller Easterling, dispossessed.” executed in Rome for challenging “Roman corporate influence, several Enduring Innocence: Global –Marc de la Maison2 values” with sex, psychoactive substances, and adjacent communities have Architecture and its Political since claimed unincorporated Masquerades (Cambridge, dancing.3 The Bacchic Mysteries were infamous status, including Summerlin, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 162. In the summer of 2014, a ten-block area in for the blurring of boundaries between genders Sunrise Manor, Spring Valley, 29 Moehring, Resort City, and Enterprise, effectively 193. the middle of Kreuzberg was cordoned off and classes, promoting dangerous ideas such resisting annexation by the 30 Ibid., 200. around a school in which some refugees as rights for women, children, and foreigners, municipality of the City of Las 31 Jamie Peck and Adam Vegas. Residents generally Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space,” had barricaded themselves in defiance of and giving slaves a taste of what freedom feels prefer the absence of a Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 386. deportation orders. Next to the school, at like. Justification for the crackdown was the municipal level of government, 32 Angela Davis, as property taxes are typically “Recognizing Racism in the the centre of an intersection, a mobile sound claim of criminal activities during the all-night, much lower. Jill S. Clark and Era of Neoliberalism,” in The system was set up, around which hundreds all-day ecstatic orgiastic rites. But even such Jeff K. Sharp, “Between the Meaning of Freedom and Other Country and the Concrete: Difficult Dialogues, ed. Angela of people sat in the streets in solidarity with large-scale suppression failed to eradicate the Rediscovering the Rural-Urban Davis (San Francisco: City refugees. Around them were about eight movement, and Rome eventually gave the cult Fringe,” City & Community 7, Lights Books, 2012), 173. no. 1 (2008): 61–79. or nine police vans, with dozens of police official status, making it a state-sanctioned 17 Moehring, Resort City, standing around, watchful. religion, helping to curtail its vitality and reduce 182–183. 18 Betty Willis is the Before me was a one-man/woman its influence on the population. designer of the signature electro-punk band, who screamed into the This should sound familiar to us, because “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada” sign located at mic above pummeling beats and abrasive it is no different from the passing of many the southern end of the Las slabs of synth noise at a high volume. People versions of Anti-Rave legislation during recent Vegas Strip. For the design of the Moulin Rouge sign, listened, and the police stood around, doing decades in the UK, US, and elsewhere, based Willis stated that she wanted nothing. Afterwards, I began my set, at a on allegations of criminal activities during to “wanted to make it as impressive and as happy and as lower volume, with groovy African music. the events (usually involving psychoactive good as I could,” in an attempt Smiles immediately appeared all around, as substances). Under these new laws, voluntary to capture the brazen ambition of the first integrated hotel in people stood up and began to dance. Chaos dance gatherings outside of the structures America. John Katsilometes, erupted suddenly only three minutes later, as a of consumerism were strictly forbidden, “Famed Designer Willis dozen police rushed the sound system, yelling and police in the UK now have the power to 80 SCAPEGOAT 10 81 Dance Dance Revolution NIGHT: INSURGENCIES remove people from events at which music groups always more extensively engage in vast periphery of forests and islands promote groups, often forming the proverbial circles “characterized by the emission of a succession participatory dancing, preserving remnants more joyful, freeform dancing, in contrast in the center of which people take turns of repetitive beats”4 was played. As a result, of age-old practices. It is not accidental that to the large-ensemble court gamelans that showing off their skills, to the enthusiastic dancing together is often today largely only the Irish, with their rich indigenous cultural play stately, majestic, and monumental cries of approval from others. And at informal allowed within the confines of commercialized history abused and exploited by the processes compositions where dance is pure spectacle. gatherings without a DJ, someone would and licensed club spaces, restrained by codes of modernization and colonialism, are known Compared to other places, traditional often start playing music on a cell phone, and of conduct, and limited within the span of a to be the most ardent dancers in all of Europe. ways of life survived much better on the nearly everyone would jump up to boogie. few hours per night. Another example of the Many other examples exist, such as Polka, African continent, as many cultures were only Meanwhile, in perfectly designed European prohibition of social dancing was the cabaret a music and dance form almost exclusively recently conquered by sovereign powers and clubs with the best sound systems people license required of bars and clubs in NYC in belonging to the underclasses of many thoroughly subjected to the homogenizing usually need to drink until 1 or 2 am to finally the 1990s for the permission of “moving in European societies. and destructive forces of imperialism, which overcome deeply seated embarrassment and time to music”5 on the premises: on multiple In place of music for voluntary and occurred much earlier in most of Asia and start self-consciously half moving to the beat, occasions I have seen police storm venues and spontaneous communal participation, the Europe. Large African states such as the Mali rigidly, like stick figures without hip joints— shut down concerts under this pretext. upper-class nobility developed cerebral and Empire also somewhat differed from their and always alone. Normalized attitudes toward In the Roman Empire, the Dionysian passive musical frameworks that are divorced counterparts in absorbing the cultures of the participatory dance always follow similar cult and other similar mystery religions of the from the body. These forms champion top- groups they conquered, rather than eradicating patterns as the above two examples in other last few centuries B.C. were already forming down hierarchical roles and structures, them wholesale. This is why the culture of societies around the world, depending on a revival movement that sought to bring back enforce a rigid separation between artists rhythm and dance in Africa survives and the degree to which and amount of time it indigenous Eurasian and European practices, and audience, and restrict dance to the thrives to a greater extent than elsewhere. has existed with or without the effects of pre-Abrahamic animist spiritual systems— narrow sphere of performance and spectacle. Ever since the advent of colonialism, hierarchical authority and centralized political ancient methods of worship, rituals, and The attitudes cultivated by this specialized rhythmically focused music from Africa has power. modes of being which by then were nearing aristocratic culture undoubtedly persist today: been regarded by the European establishment Beat-driven music and social dance extinction at the hands of successions of the Wikipedia entry for “dance” first defines as primitive and subhuman, its guttural noises was central in the evolutionary process of conquering armies.