Untitled, First Dance, 2021, Projected Slide Show With Audio
First Dance
As long as we’ve had sticks to bang with, people have danced. Even the Criminal Justice Act couldn’t persuade communities to hang up their dancing shoes. But then Covid-19 hit and the nation’s clubs closed for 18 months. First Dance took people back into these near-sacred spaces to experience their favourite song at club volume.
Alone in the vast expanse, they danced with abandon, letting the music envelop them as an unmanned camera captured their moments of pure, unbridled emotion. The sporadic flashes illuminated their forms, creating a juxtaposition of solitude and exuberance. Post-experience interviews revealed a unanimous sentiment: a cathartic release, a reconnection to a part of themselves that had been dormant.
In interviews afterwards the dancers talked of the cathartic euphoria they had experienced from just one single track. First Dance seeks not only to emphasise the significance of nightclubs in British youth culture but also to underscore the therapeutic essence of dance.