What Might Have Been

It's February 1979, and Punk is moribund enough for Legs & Co to get involved and start clod hopping about in plastic sandals and party wigs. If they'd only flipped the record over they would have encountered 'Frigging in the Rigging', a puerile chant full of explicit sexual imagery that is crying out for literal interpretation in dance by five ditzy dancers. Can you imagine the hand gestures?

From Just This Side Of Midnight

I don’t know whether recent allegations about Cliff Richard are true. My only response is that it wouldn’t surprise me, not because I have reason to particularly suspect him but because, in a world where Rolf Harris has been unmasked as a serial sex offender, I now lack the capacity to be shocked by further revelations. Anyway, Cliff fascinates me, and always has done, so I thought I’d look at some of his occasionally very odd oeuvre, today arriving in 1979, already twenty one years into his seemingly endless career.  

Here, Cliff is searching for a green light. He’s been looking for it all night. It’s one of his sleaziest records, ably complemented here by the addition of Hot Gossip in this performance from a 1979 episode of ‘The Kenny Everett Video Show’.

Cliff appears to be lost in a sensuous reverie but, ever the innovator, has clearly worked closely with choreographer Arlene Phillips to invent dogging. The torch wielding, goggle wearing, balaclava clad dancers bring an additional sinister note to the balefully lit proceedings. Cliff, clad all in black, is both victim and voyeur. He’s found half a dozen green lights tonight, and, one way or another, he is going to get fucked.

It's good to be back.

Listen, Move and Dance

The last caption sends a shiver down my spine. Thank Christ for Zumba.

Music Machine

To say that ‘Music Machine’ is my favourite British disco film sounds like faint praise but, in actual fact, it’s a film I have a lot of affection for, a bona fide UK exploitation film that is obviously in the thrall of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ but has all the edge of ‘Summer Holiday’.

Ill-fated Gerry Sundquist plays Gerry, a bit of a chancer who is also a bit of a dancer. When his local nightclub holds a competition for a pair of disco freaks to appear in some dodgy film, Gerry decides that this is his moment and goes all out for the prize, enlisting the fabulously exotic daughter of an African diplomat (played by ‘New Faces’ star Patti Boulaye) as his partner.

There’s the usual trials and tribulations on the way to the big night, dirty tricks, disappointments, confrontations, fallings out and flirtations but, for some reason, the only scene I can really recall is Gerry jerkily dancing up umpteen flights of stairs to the high rise flat where he lives with his Mum and Dad. In true ‘pad it out’ exploitation style this takes a long, long time - but does neatly summarise why Gerry lives for disco: his life is shit, his prospects are zero, the lift is broken but, on the plus side, but he can dance a bit and, when he’s doing it, everything else goes away.

We’ve looked at youth cults before, as well as the transcendent qualities of dancing, and the two bump clumsily into each other here. Ultimately, ‘Music Machine’ is a cheap cash in, and the familiarity of the settings and the depressed feel of late seventies Britain is enough strip it of any trace of stardust – but there’s an endearing, poignant, totally understandable truth there in the way that it shows how young people live for Saturday night, and seize the opportunity to go out and get out, to momentarily escape their limited lives and the adult grind that is just ahead of them. You’re a long time grown up, for Christ’s sake, so why not be able to look back and remember that you once wore a white suit and danced like John Travolta?

Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance

Abbot's Bromley is a small village in Staffordshire which has held an annual Horn Dance since 1226. Twelve dancers, including six Deermen (from the Bentley family up until 1914, from the related Fowell family up to the present day) are accompanied by a hobby horse, a bow man, a Maid Marian (a bloke in drag) a Fool, a boy with a triangle and a man with an accordion. The ensemble perform their rites at various stops on a prescribed route. After a twenty mile round trip, they go to the pub.

The antlers used in the dance were carbon dated in the seventies, and found to be from circa 1065 ad. They are Reindeer antlers, which must have been imported from Scandinavia (even in 1065, Reindeers had been extinct in Britain for about 8,000 years). As ever with these ancient rituals there is an ongoing debate about just how ancient it is, with some experts suggesting that the dance may have originated much later in the 16th century, making it a mere 500 years old. Either way, it's the oldest traditional dance we have in this country.

Since 1660, it has been celebrated on Wakes Monday, which is today, so you'd better get your skates on if you want to see it.

Feeling The Love

Britain is not a nation of dancers, a statement borne out by forty odd years of watching young people mill about and bump into each other to music every week on pervert’s playground ‘Top Of The Pops’. Even the dancers on the programme couldn’t dance or, at least, despite having some individual skills, found themselves trotting around and doing half-hearted high kicks in whatever piss poor routine Pan’s People, Ruby Flipper or Legs & Co were scheduled to do that week. 

In 1978, however, for a few minutes at least, everything changed. The catalyst was Donna Summer, and the soundtrack was her phenomenal hit record ‘I Feel Love’. Faced with the relentless propulsive energy (literally, the sequencer sounds like an outboard motor) of this superlative track, even the British could dance. Ignore Legs & Co, by the way, they’re just getting in the way (if you’re wondering, they are sat in a plywood car because they have just ‘interpreted’ Jonathan Richman’s ‘Roadrunner’). 

Look at the audience, though, the poor, lumpy proletariat who have been pushed around and out of the way all day and ran the risk of being groped by The Hairy Fuckflake or worse: they are energised, invigorated, alive. This isn’t just disco, this is a primal force and, somewhere deep in the collective consciousness, there is a memory of how to rhythmically and vigorously move to music. How much more fun is that than shifting your weight from foot to foot and hoping for the best?

Happy Flora Faddy Furry Dance Day

On Flora Day (today!) in Helston in Cornwall, the whole town take to the streets from seven am to seven pm and hold a series of mass dances to a melody called 'John the Bone' performed by local brass and silver bands (the tune was incorporated into the more famous Floral Dance and taken into the charts by Terry Wogan).

A wearying, hypnotic, ancient tradition its origins are, of course, mysterious, but the dance serves a dual purpose: a Pagan celebration of Beltane (the triumph of light over darkness, life over death, i.e. the end of Winter) and a Christian festival for Saint George, who reputedly saved the town from Satan, and the archangel Michael, the patron saint of Cornwall.

Morris On

Some stills from the 2011 documentary 'Way Of The Morris', about the folk dance tradition of Addebury, Oxfordshire (from the distant past to 1914; revived in 1975 and still thriving).

Nicely shot and put together, the film is very interesting when sticking to the point but slowly drifts into becoming more about the presenter and co-director than the dance, eventually degenerating into a shot of him wandering thoughtfully through the long grass with a Morris stick over his shoulder, like an outtake from a David Soul video.  

Rock & Roll Grenoside

Grenoside in South Yorkshire has a long standing tradition of sword dancing. The highlight of the dance is the 'decapitation' of the leader (they knock off his rabbit skin hat), after which he comes back to life. J.G Frazer would have a field day. The dance still happens, by the way, on Boxing Day each year.

Perhaps I should have let you know that in December. At least you're prewarned for this year.

A Lovely Bunch

The Britannia Coconut Dancers from Bacup in Lancashire do their really quite strange thing. For the purpose of this 1930 film they have omitted a traditional part of their costume, i.e. they haven't blacked up, although I'm pretty sure this is a concession to technology rather than political correctness. They still dance every year, by the way (well, not this lot, they're all dead, but the current 'Nutters', as they are affectionately known). They even have a website where I purchased a tea towel.

Rappers

The High Spen Sword Dancers get their swerve on. High Spen is near Newcastle, and this is rapper sword dancing, i.e. the swords are shorter. Oh, this is circa 1928.