Disco Dancing Quotes

The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.

Sometimes in life confusion tends to arise and only dialogue of dance seems to make sense.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.

Dance as the narration of a magical story; that recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls.

If spirit is the seed, dance is the water of its evolution.

Dance is the timeless interpretation of life.

Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.

If you opened the dictionary and searched for the meaning of a Goddess, you would find the reflection of a dancing lady.

Don't breathe to survive; dance and feel alive.

Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.

Dance to inspire, dance to freedom, life is about experiences so dance and let yourself become free.

Through synergy of intellect, artistry and grace came into existence the blessing of a dancer.

DANCE – Defeat All Negativity (via) Creative Expression.

She who is a dancer can only sway the silk of her hair like the summer breeze.

Dance is the ritual of immortality.

Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.' 'What is it about, then?' I ask. 'It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.' 'I don't know how to get over it, Mum,' I say. 'At this point I'm so tired of myself. I don't know how to let go of her.' 'You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.' 'Does it get easier?' 'Much,' she says.

One step, two steps, three steps; like winds of time experience joy of centuries, when movements become revelations of the dance of destinies.

Disco's are tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don't.

Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance and not breath.

Dance is that delicacy of life radiating every particle of our existence with happiness.

There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it — no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never ever. An inordinate amount of time passes. It is utterly void of struggle. No ex-wives are contained within it [...] The song of death is sweet and endless... But what is this? Somewhere in the sore, bloated *man-meat* around you — a sensation! [...] The limbed and headed machine of pain and undignified suffering is firing up again. It wants to walk the desert. Hurting. Longing. Dancing to disco music.

Transcend the terrestrial; surpass the celestial, from nature’s hands when you receive the sublime pleasures of dance.

and tonight we held each other, one last time, like a dance to a slow song on an empty floor, underneath a single disco ball in front of no one at all

When a dancer performs, melody transforms into a carriage, expressions turn into fuel and spirit experiences a journey to a world where passion attains fulfillment.

A history of nightlife!--what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse.

She imagined herself whirling breathlessly beneath the flashing lights of some impossibly chic Manhattan disco. Suddenly, a hand touches her arm. She turns. ‘Pardon me,’ Mick Jagger says, 'I believe this next dance is mine.

A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling, but the music is something I've never heard, discordant and haunting and insistent, the kind of music that demands you dance.

The night lantern next to Begum’s khaat(Bed) was buzzing with mosquitoes and insects like a cheap night disco bar where they came in for their daily dose of dance and music.

We went to this stupid heavy metal disco after the first gig – which was awful – and the group all started dancing to Deep Purple. I told them to sit down, have some dignity.

Spirit is a child, the tune of dancing feet its lullaby.

Make dance the mission every moment seeks to accomplish.

Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance like breath.

Reacher prowled the hallway, his gun stiff-armed way out in front of him, his torso jerking violently left and right from the hips, like a crazy disco dance. The house-storming shuffle.

He’d thought about this, a slow dance with his lover, not a flashy tango or a writhing clash under a disco ball. But he’d never dreamed he would get one. It was possibly one of the most erotic, most loving things Ty had ever done for him. Neither

But any idiot can see you two are gaga for one another.” As in Lady Gaga? Because I do enjoy riding Wade’s disco stick and playing our own version of poker face. And even though I’m terrified we’ll wind up having a bad romance, leaving me to just dance while watching Wade ride off into the sunset with Alejandro as the paparazzi followed in a frenzy, I can’t seem to stop myself from loving him. I shook the nonsense out of my head.

If the door frames aren't rattlin', it ain't loud enough.

Limit not to only five, when the divine gifts the supreme sixth; the sense of dance

By now, the smell had become like another person in the room. I had an image of it dancing around me in a shiny seventies disco outfit and John Travolta hair.

Audience of angels descend in the ambiance reciting praises in your glory, when you wear your dance shoes, when you arrive at the stage and with every step you take beneath your feet heaven moves. That is the power of dance.

If only I could cry. I am beyond that. The light, the light, lending itself to empty downtown Saturday, but still the stupid insensate cars flush by oblivious to their stupidity, my silent plea. It isn't Mexico. It's not Paris. It's a painting by Hopper come to life. I am trapped inside a dead thing. Language is impossible here, even in English. Who has the arrogance to say: I'm mad, this is my crazy view of things, help me. I'm trapped in a silent world, a tableau of forty years ago. The walls are different, the tables, the heights of the veiling and the chairs. I loom above this letter. The view past the rows of cakes in the plate glass window is unfamiliar. I am a ghost. There is nothing now between me and death. Death is the unfamiliarity of everything, the strangeness of the once familiar. The same spatial configurations only the light is hollow, sick. I think I lack the energy to hit expensive discos which I don't know where they are to be rejected tonight. I look passable. My energy's low. I love to dance but despair is not a good muse. This Mexico, babe. Men who don't love you but act wildly as if they do initially. Self-involved, narcissistic men... The men drink and philosophize about pain. The women live it solo and culturelessly. No one cries, except easily, sentimentally. The devil, therefore God, exists. Oaxaca was a pushover compared to this. Pain had boundaries there. Spare us big cities, oh lord!

It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.

I have been a full-time fag for the past five years, I realized the other day. Everyone I know is gay, everything I do is gay, all my fantasies are gay, I am what Gus called those people we used to see in discos, bars, baths, all the time—remember? Those people we used to see EVERYWHERE, every time we went out, so that you wanted to call the police and have them arrested?

I can’t help its being gay. I have been a full-time fag for the past five years, I realized the other day. Everyone I know is gay, everything I do is gay, all my fantasies are gay, I am what Gus called those people we used to see in the discos, bars, baths, all the time—remember? Those people we used to see EVERYWHERE, every time we went out, so that you wanted to call the police and have them arrested?—I am a doomed queen. I would LIKE to be a happily married attorney with a house in the suburbs, 2.6 kids, and a station wagon, in which we would drive every summer to see the Grand Canyon, but I’m not! I am completely, hopelessly gay!

Did those “new gays” spinning about like giddy tops in discos care to know that dancing with someone of the same sex was punishable as “lewd conduct” then? Still, a club in Topanga Canyon boasted a system of warning lights. When they flashed, lesbians and gay men shifted—what a grand adventure!—and danced with each other, laughing at the officers’ disappointed faces! How much pleasure—and camaraderie, yes, real kinship—had managed to exist in exile. Did those arrogant young people know that, only years ago, you could be sentenced to life in prison for consensual sex with another man? A friend of his destroyed by shock therapy decreed by the courts. Another friend sobbing on the telephone before he slashed his wrists— Thomas's hands on his steering wheel had clenched in anger, anger he had felt then, anger he felt now. And all those pressures attempted to deplete you, and disallow— “—the yearnings of the heart,” he said aloud. Yet he and others of his generation had lived through those barbaric times—and survived—those who had survived—with style. Faced with those same outrages, what would these “new gays” have done? “Exactly as we did,” he answered himself. The wind had resurged, sweeping sheaths of dust across the City, pitching tumbleweeds from the desert into the streets, where they shattered, splintering into fragments that joined others and swept away. Now, they said, everything was fine, no more battles to fight. Oh, really? What about arrests that continued, muggings, bashings, murder, and hatred still spewing from pulpits, political platforms, and nightly from the mouths of so-called comedians? Didn't the “new gays” know—care!—that entrenched “sodomy” laws still existed, dormant, ready to spring on them, send them to prison? How could they think they had escaped the tensions when those pressures were part of the legacy of being gay? Didn't they see that they remained—as his generation and generations before his had been—the most openly despised? And where, today, was the kinship of exile?

And he was introduced to Loki, the family’s hairless cat. “The kids wanted another pet,” Becky explained as Felix stared in horror at the creature beside him. “But with Polly’s allergies . . .” “You are lying to me. You borrowed this creature from a zoo to play a prank on me. This isn’t even really a cat, is it? This is some sort of rat and opossum hybrid. This is a lifelike Japanese robot that can dance to disco music.” “Funny. They’re called sphinx cats. Come on, feel her skin. Like peach fuzz, right? Isn’t she sweet? Give her a good rub. She’s very affectionate.” “Ah-ha, yes, isn’t that just . . . er, what is coating my hands?” “It’s . . . it’s like a body wax. I should’ve bathed her before you came. The hairless cats, they ooze this waxy stuff to protect their skin. ’Cause they don’t have hair. To protect them. So the waxy ooze helps. You see.” Felix stared at her for several seconds, his hands held up like a doctor about to perform surgery. “I’m going to wash my hands now. And I’m going to try very hard not to run out of this house screaming.

Dear Sad Eyes, I’m sure my eyes look sad from the outside, but nobody knows the pain behind my eyes. Sad eyes, do you know how to smile? I’m sure you would know if you weren’t so tired all of the time. Sad eyes, do you know how to rest? No, I have to strain my eyes in the dark because who else would watch my back. Sad eyes, there’s no such thing as rest—that is only wishful thinking. A stranger spoke to me today. She noticed me, my smile, and my sad eyes. For once, I didn’t feel invisible. I felt like somebody. Ms. Brown doesn’t know me, but she made me feel special. She made me feel like I mattered. She tried to be nice, but I fucked that up. Sad eyes, you know just as well as I do that anger eats me up alive, and I do not know how to control it. The anger I have for others is destroying me piece by piece. If I let it destroy me, then I won’t be able to kiss the moon, and all of the stars are going to fall from the sky. I won’t be able to dance in the moonlight, and the stars will not be my disco ball. I am so empty inside. I make-believe and imagine the dragonflies have filled my empty arms of darkness with light. Sad eyes, do you think you will be able to rest tonight? I hope so. With the moon, stars, and dragonflies surrounding me with so much light, I feel at peace and protected. Let’s try to rest and try it again tomorrow. After all, it will be another day. Who knows what might happen? Counting the stars and kissing the moon.

My sisters and I giggled at “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” (“Tits and ass / bought myself a fancy pair / tightened up the derriere”) while our parents sat in the front of the car—my father at the wheel, my mom in the passenger seat—both distracted and nonplussed. We flipped through the Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins hardbacks in my grandmother’s bookshelf and watched The Exorcist on the Z Channel (the country’s first pay-cable network that premiered in LA in the mid-’70s) after our parents sternly told us not to watch it, but of course we did anyway and got properly freaked out. We saw skits about people doing cocaine on Saturday Night Live, and we were drawn to the allure of disco culture and unironic horror movies. We consumed all of this and none of it ever triggered us—we were never wounded because the darkness and the bad mood of the era was everywhere, and when pessimism was the national language, a badge of hipness and cool. Everything was a scam and everybody was corrupt and we were all being raised on a diet of grit. One could argue that this fucked us all up, or maybe, from another angle, it made us stronger. Looking back almost forty years later, it probably made each of us less of a wuss. Yes, we were sixth and seventh graders dealing with a society where no parental filters existed. Tube8.com was not within our reach, fisting videos were not available on our phones, nor were Fifty Shades of Grey or gangster rap or violent video games, and terrorism hadn’t yet reached our shores, but we were children wandering through a world made almost solely for adults. No one cared what we watched or didn’t, how we felt or what we wanted, and we hadn’t yet become enthralled by the cult of victimization. It was, by comparison to what’s now acceptable when children are coddled into helplessness, an age of innocence.

Hey, Ben,” she says, ignoring the rest of us. “You want to dance?” Ben’s cheeks turn the same scarlet as Rosie’s dress. He and Ryder exchange a pointed look while Lucy and I just stand there gawking. “Go on, man,” Ryder says, nudging him. “You look great, Rosie,” he adds. “Nice dress.” She smiles up at him, her blue eyes seeming to glitter beneath the disco-ball lighting. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.” She glances from Ryder to me and back to Ryder again. “The two of you…You looked good together up there.” “I know, right?” Lucy nods, and I shoot her a “what are you doing?” glare. She ignores it. “Maybe these two should stop the hating and listen to their parents.” An awkward silence follows. Finally, Ben seems to remember why Rosie came over in the first place. “Um, you want to go dance?” “Yeah. I love this song.” Ben nods. “Okay. Catch you guys later.” Rosie’s smile seems genuine as she follows Ben to the dance floor. I hope that means she’s finally figured out what a sweetheart he is. As soon as they’re gone, Lucy lets out a low whistle. “Whoa, did that just happen?” “I think it did,” I say, watching as Rosie wraps her arms around Ben’s neck. She must have said something funny, because he throws his head back and laughs. Lucy shakes her head in amazement. “I swear, it’s like we’re in some kind of alternate universe tonight.” “Well, in that case, how about you and me, Luce?” Mason says with a cocky grin. “Think you can handle me on the dance floor?” “Oh, what the hell?” Lucy says with a shrug. “Why not!” She reaches for Mason’s hand and drags him toward the dance floor but stops a few feet away and turns back to face Ryder and me. “Hey, you two--behave!” In seconds, she and Mason are swallowed by the crowd. “And then there were two,” Ryder says, reaching for my hand. He leans down, his lips near my ear. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to kiss you right now?” he whispers. “Later,” I say with a shiver. It’s not an empty word. It’s a promise. He gives my hand a squeeze. “So…until then, I guess we dance.” “We dance,” I say as a slow song begins to play. Talk about good timing.

Life isn’t about surviving the storm; it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.

You said to get involved with people, that I can’t learn about connections in a vacuum.” I agreed. “So what’s not working?” She pulled a long list from her purse. “This,” Linda said, “is a list I put together of all the involvements I’ve had in the past few months. And nothing’s happening.” I read the list, which looked something like this: Dancing lessons: ballroom, disco, and line Sports: sailing, rollerblading, golf, and tennis Music: opera, modern, and piano lessons Art: ceramics and museums Spiritual: Bible study, worship, and missions Career: Ongoing training, night school to earn an MBA “What are you grinning at?” Linda asked me. I wasn’t even aware I was smiling. I told her, “This is a proud moment for me. I’ve never met a real live renaissance woman.” “Now I’m really confused,” Linda said. I explained, “Linda, this is the most well-rounded, comprehensive, and exhausting list I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine how you can even get up in the mornings. But it’s not solving your problem. “These are all great activities, designed to develop you and help you in your life. But each of them is primarily functional, rather than relational. Their goal is competence in some skill, or recreation, or learning more about God’s creation. But relationship isn’t the goal. These are ‘doing’ things, not ‘connecting’ things.” Linda started to get it. “You know, I’ve noticed that I am talking to people at these activities. But all the talk is about tennis or management theories. I’ve wondered when someone in the classroom was going to ask me about my emotional and spiritual life.” “Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

The doctors save the handsome man’s life, but he loses one eye. Before a nice glass one can be fitted, they give him a temporary wooden eye. The man becomes very depressed and sits at home, moping around. Eventually his friends come over and drag him out to a disco to try and cheer him up. One of his friends suggests he talk to a cute girl who’s all alone. ‘No, she’ll never go for a man with a wooden eye,’ he says. ‘Okay,’ says his friend, ‘how about that girl over there? She has a really big nose. Maybe she’ll dance with you.’ The man summons up all his courage, walks over to the girl, and says, ‘Would you like to dance?’ The girl gets all excited. ‘Would I?! Would I?!’ she says. To which the man responds ‘Big nose! Big nose!

I don't think about what it will be like to say good-bye. I don't ask about her leaving. I don't think about how sad I'll be without her, or say I'll miss her or how life will be a perfect graveyard without her living next door for the rest of our lives...Lucy's eyes, deep and blue and flecked with light from dancing disco stars hanging from the ceiling, remind me of the sky, but also of water. I've never been to Maine, but I imagine that the color of the ocean there looks something like Lucy's blue eyes.

Men have always danced bhangra, and women the female Punjabi equivalent, gidda, but not in the same place. Now, at sophisticated wedding receptions, there may be mixed discos with elderly bemused relatives watching and thinking how things have changed since their young days. Not, of course for the better!

Joy that a handsome man was smiling at her, his hair stuck to his forehead, his T-shirt becoming more transparent. On a whim--- and Astra would later blame it on the Santa Claus shots--- she wrapped her arms around Jack's neck and pulled his lips to hers. The shock of it caused them both to stop dancing as the minty-cherry taste in her mouth mingled with the ginger on his breath. Tentative at first, her lips waited for him to respond, a sign he was open to sharing her joy. She was about to pull away, hot embarrassment kindling to life in her cheeks, when his hands when to her hips, and his lips moved with hers, and her mouth opened for him. Their kiss found its own rhythm on the dance floor, moving them closer together as the people bumped around them, but Astra didn't care. She only cared that this kiss reminded her that she liked kissing, she liked being touched, she liked feeling wanted. It had been so long. Her hands grabbed at his shirt as he moved his kisses to her neck. She moaned but too softly for anyone to hear over the music. Lights flashed and swirled on the ceiling; the air pulsated with heat. She was dizzy and breathless. Her hands pressed against him, savoring how well they molded to his curves and angles. Her lips found his again, and she wanted to be closer, wishing she could wrap her legs around him and have her way. Her knees quaked as his hands explored the way her jeans clung to her butt and hips, finding the hem of her shirt and touching her lower back, heated skin on heated skin. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. She broke the kiss long enough to look into his eyes: they flashed from blue to green to black with the disco lights, his hair dark with perspiration, and his breath coming as fast as her own. Now that they'd kissed, she knew what it was about the way he looked at her. He looked at her like this moment had been inevitable, a done deal, foretold years ago. And she believed it. The feeling left her even more light-headed.

Do what lights up your soul like a disco ball in a dark room. Chase after joy like it’s the last slice of pizza at a party. Life’s too short for anything less than belly laughs, spontaneous adventures, and dancing like nobody’s watching. So, crank up the music, grab your sparkly shoes, and strut through life with a twinkle in your eye and a skip in your step. After all, the best moments happen when you follow the rhythm of your own happiness.

Krissi starts dancing toward me in a showy disco-jog. Still a bit hurt, I do vague, place-holding disco fingers at him.

The core theme that spans much of Springsteen’s working-class studies is the disconnection—real and feared—of working people from the things that ground them: job, family, home, and community. “I live now only with strangers,” he sings in “Streets of Fire,” “I talk to only strangers / I walk with angels that have no place.” As Springsteen explained, “I think what happened during the seventies was that, first of all, the hustle became legitimized”—and he did not mean the disco dance. By the time of his follow up The River (1980), when his character receives his “union card and a wedding coat” for his nineteenth birthday, that union card was a symbol of a failure to get out, a source of entrapment. What was a source of material liberation in the 1930s, membership in a trade union, had become a symbol of those not chosen, those left behind.49

Barbie's new face, fashioned by doll sculptor Joyce Clark, was the face of disco. The doll appears in the 1977 catalogue against a black background, as if on the edge of a cavernous dance floor. Light glints off her glossy magenta boa, her burnished gold hair, her luminous diamondlike ring. Gone is the haughty smirk of her early years. Seemingly stupefied by the disco beat, SuperStar Barbie's mouth is set in a broad smile. The revamped Barbie changed the relationship between the doll and the little girl who owned it. Barbie could still function as an object onto which the child projected her future self; but because the doll had the trappings of celebrity, the girl's imagined future had to involve being rich and famous.

Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal...

The apartments had probably been built back in the 70’s when the country was going through some ugly social times. Maybe the country was going through its adolescent phase and breaking out with a bad case of social acne. Cheesy professors were running around the country proclaiming “turn on, tune in, drop out.” A mean-spirited drunk from LA was cranking out poems about the low-life and reaching for another beer out of the refrigerator on stage as part of his performance. The porn industry was in its golden era. People proclaiming their individuality and uniqueness were all dressed the same. Mothers thought they were educating their kids by letting them watch Sesame Street, but they were just turning their kids into TV junkies and a future generation of pudding heads with blank faces ready to believe anything on the lamestream media. The Vietnam War eventually came to an end after Laos was clustered bombed, which had nothing to do with ending the war. Dominoes didn’t fall. A new war memorial went out for bid. Some crazy scientist found a way to make clothes out of chemicals - polyester. Dwarfs found their favorite hangout - the disco. The whole country seemed to be dancing to the disco beat, hypnotized by the flashing strobe lights off the big, shiny ball.

I ventured into the dimly lit darkness towards the blaring disco music and crowded dance floor. The enclosure reeked of poppers (alkyl nitrites), a recreational drug often used by gay men to heighten their sexual arousal. The club was hopping with the latest disco hits from the popular disco queen of 70s, Donna Summer. Half-naked and almost naked men were crowding the dance floor, grinding their perspiring bodies against each other in a sensual and sexual trancelike state. Men in various stages of foreplay were gyrating their muscular and sinewy bodies against each other in preparation for impulsive back-room romps. After taking to the dance floor for a couple of songs, I embarked on an exploration journey towards the back of the house. It was difficult to make out the abundance of naked bodies loathering in the dark in various stages of copulation. When I ventured into a large room with a sling in the middle, I heard a familiar, high-pitched groaning voice. It was a voice I had heard several years ago in class at the Bahriji School. It was a soprano voice that I could never get out of my head. Surrounding the voice was a queue of mesomorphically built men, waiting their turn to satisfy their sexual desires on an equally muscular hunk lying on the suspended, swinging sling. The man’s legs were spread above his torso. They were strapped to either sides of the hanging chains and so were his wrists, tied securely above his head. Although the ‘bottom’ was blindfolded with a black kerchief, I instantly recognized him as none other than the famous supermodel, Rick Samuels.

Welcome to our home and to Eternity Springs, Ms. Timberlake.” “I’m Ali.” “Ali, then. I’m Nic, and I’d get up, but my dictatorial husband has threatened me with torture if I rise from my chair in the next hour.” Alison grinned and repeated, “Torture?” Gabe nodded. “We had a discussion about bad disco music this morning. I promised to sing ‘Dancing Queen’ if she doesn’t behave.” “I rest my case,” Nic said. “As long as you rest your ankle and my back, that’s all I care about,” he fired back before offering to take the visitors’ coats. Celeste laughed. “Ah, acting like old married folk already, I see.

Our New Year “Let’s go down the disco” experience, with the aid of Charlie Horse and Teddy as partners, was actually quite good fun on the funosity scale.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being becomes dance.

During the last ten years or so, I've seen quite a lot of Gordon, selling off his land for him. You know Gordon. He goes for anything trendy, especially young people's fads. Goes all out for a while, until something else takes his attention. Disco dancing, anti-draft, cocaine, anti-nuke - he has his little fling at whatever is 'in.' Most of 'em seem kind of nasty to me, but then I’m a bourgeois flag-waver."  "He calls me a fascist," Helena said.  "Oh, sure. He'd call me one too, except that I'm an Oppressed Minority. I bother him because I don't behave the way his stereotype says I should.

But that prescribed social necessity began to give some gay men pause. A thirty-seven-year-old Studio One regular spoke with ambivalence to the Times in 1976. ‘Even the dances have a depersonalized quality to them. The Hustle and The Bus Stop, for instance. In both, you have 50 or 100 people lined up, dancing the same way, completely unattached to each other, simply doing the same movements, like robots. Like lemmings, they begin to form those lines.’ He went on to prognosticate a dystopian future, what he called the ultimate discotheque: ‘I can envision the day when we all just walk up to the entrance to a disco, put a bunch of quarters in a slot, enter and become immediately surrounded by music. Then each of us will go into a space the size of a telephone booth and dance by ourselves.

Screenplay is a company that provides music videos to businesses. Music and video screens are such common attractions in city businesses that court sexual minorities that many of them subscribe to this service. Via disc-based or direct-to-system download, Screenplay subscribers pay for access to a service called “VJ Pro,” where they choose from different genres of music videos that loosely resemble radio formats: HitsVision, a Top 40 mix that promises subscribers “nothing but the hits from every source”; DanceVision, featuring “exclusive remixes, hard to find imports and popular mainstream hits and everything in between designed expressly for the fast paced dance environment”; UrbanVision, a rhythm and blues/hip-hop hybrid that purports “to be all inclusive”; RockVision, rock music featuring songs “from Classic . . . to Disco, New Wave to Old School”; CountryVision, “an upbeat mix of current hits and classic favorites”; and LatinVision, “designed specifically for the sophisticated Latin dance crowd that demands only the hottest and best in tropical, Caribbean, merengue dance and Latin pop.”48 Many gay bars subscribe to ClubVision, which features a mix of “techno, trance and euro-flavored . . . tracks.”49 For dance-themed bars, this subscription features “an extended autoplay feature and individual chapter stops for single track selection.

While Bob was busy with Clara’s recording, his modular had just notched another first in the world: it sired the genre of electronic dance music. “I Feel Love,” a hypnotic, seductive single by Donna Summer, the “Queen of Disco,” had cast the Moog in a central role. Soon after the song’s release in July 1977 it went to No. 1 in the UK, climbing to No. 6 in the U.S., and then perched atop charts internationally, eventually making the “top songs of all time” lists of magazines and critics worldwide. Donna Summer and her collaborator, composer Giorgio Moroder, had pushed the boundaries of disco permanently into the electronic sphere with this single song.

The muezzin’s call to prayer punctuated the days, weddings and funerals followed the faith’s prescribed rituals, activities slowed down during fasting months, and pork might be hard to find on a restaurant’s menu. Otherwise, people lived their lives, with women riding Vespas in short skirts and high heels on their way to office jobs, boys and girls chasing kites, and long-haired youths dancing to the Beatles and the Jackson 5 at the local disco. Muslims were largely indistinguishable from the Christians, Hindus, or college-educated nonbelievers, like my stepfather, as they crammed onto Jakarta’s overcrowded buses, filled theater seats at the latest kung-fu movie, smoked outside roadside taverns, or strolled down the cacophonous streets. The overtly pious were scarce in those days, if not the object of derision then at least set apart, like Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out pamphlets in a Chicago neighborhood.

And because I don’t like sports, and because I don’t like disco dancing, and because I don’t take drugs, and because I don’t drink, and I don’t beat my head into the floor, and I don’t have a wife to beat, I have Big Black.

Around 1976, 12" dance and DJ singles emerged. Because the grooves on these oversize singles could be wider, and because they were spinning as fast as a 45, they were louder than LPs that spun at 33 RPM. I remember in the late seventies hearing how the low end (the sound of the kick drum and bass) could be brought forward on this format and made louder. Discos had speakers that could accommodate those frequencies, and they became a world of throbbing, pulsing low end—an experience that had to wait for the CD and digital recording to be experienced outside the club environment.

It’s about every rejection you’ve ever experienced in your entire life. It’s about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn’t dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don’t want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren’t good enough. You live through all of it again.

It is still unclear exactly what inspired such brutality. Many point to the influence of the Guatemalan Kaibiles working in the Zetas. In the Guatemalan civil war, troops cut off heads of captured rebels in front of villagers to terrify them from joining a leftist insurgency. Turning into mercenaries in Mexico, the Kaibiles might have reprised their trusted tactic to terrify enemies of the cartel. Others point to the influence of Al Qaeda decapitation videos from the Middle East, which were shown in full on some Mexican TV channels. Some anthropologists even point to the pre-Colombian use of beheadings and the way Mayans used them to show complete domination of their enemies. The Zetas were not thinking like gangsters, but like a paramilitary group controlling territory. Their new way of fighting rapidly spread through the Mexican Drug War. In September the same year, La Familia gang—working with the Zetas in Michoacán state—rolled five human heads onto a disco dance floor. By the end of 2006, there had been dozens of decapitations. Over the next years, there were hundreds. Gangsters throughout Mexico also copied the Zetas’ paramilitary way of organizing. Sinaloans created their own cells of combatants with heavy weaponry and combat fatigues. They had to fight fire with fire. “The Beard” Beltrán Leyva led particularly well-armed death squads. One was later busted in a residential house in Mexico City. They had twenty automatic rifles, ten pistols, twelve M4 grenade launchers, and flak jackets that even had their own logo— FEDA—an acronym for Fuerzas Especiales de Arturo, or Arturo’s Special Forces.

He had me gripped tight and I wriggled to get loose. He pulled me closer and then we were dancing. Reckless movement, liquored laughter, sequined disco. One of those inscrutable moments where a relationship became certifiable. Acquaintances became friends, friends became besties. Here was where Jay and Zario became Jay and Zario, his fingers into me, my steps moving his.

There’s not enough dancing in the world. And the fact that there are no daytime discos right now is indicative of the trouble we’re in as a society.

Carnival Cruise Lines has its own successful way of doing things, which in this case involved creating a musical group called “The Hot Shots!” The word “Fantastic” comes to mind when thinking of this musical group! Each member auditioned separately at the Carnival rehearsal facility in Miami and then rehearsed as a group until they were ready for the big leagues aboard ship. Fortunately for me and my team, which includes Jorge Fernandez, a former guitar player from Cuba and now a top flight structural engineer in the Tampa Bay area, who helps me with much of my technical work; Lucy Shaw, Chief Copy Editor; Ursula Bracker, Proofer, and lucky me Captain Hank Bracker, award winning author (including multiple gold medals), were aboard the Carnival Legend and were privileged to listen to and enjoy, quite by chance, music that covered everything from Classical Rock, to Disco, to Mo Town and the years in between. Talented Judith Mullally, Carnival’s Entertainment Director, was on hand to encourage and partake in the music with her outstanding voice and, not to be left out, were members of the ship’s repertory cast, as well as the ship’s Cruise Director. The popular Red Frog lounge on the Carnival Legend was packed to the point that one of the performances had to be held on the expansive Lido deck. However, for the rest of the nights, the lounge was packed with young and old, singing and dancing to “The Hot Shots!” - a musical group that would totally pack any venue in Florida. Pheona Baranda, from the Philippines, is cute as a button and is the lead female singer, with a pitch-perfect soprano voice. Lucas Pedreira, from Argentina, is the lead male singer and guitar player who displayed endless energy and the ability to keep the audience hopping! Paulo Baranda, Pheona’s younger brother, plays the lead guitar to perfection and behind the scenes is the band’s musical director and of course is also from the Philippines. Ygor, from Israel, is the “on the money” drummer who puts so much into what he is doing, that at one point he hurt his hand, but refused to slow down. Nick is the bass guitar player, from down under New Zealand, and Marina, the piano and keyboard player, hails from the Ukraine. As a disclaimer I admit that I hold shares in Carnival stock but there is nothing in it for me other than the pleasure of listening to this ultra-talented group which cannot and should not be denied. They were and still are the very best! However, I am sorry that just as a “Super Nova” they unfortunately can’t last. Their bright shining light is presently flaring, but this will only be for a fleeting moment and then will permanently go to black next year on January 2, 2020. That’s just the way it is, but my crew and I, as well as the many guests aboard the Carnival Legend, experienced music seldom heard anywhere, any longer…. It was a treat we will remember for years to come and we hope to see them again, as individual musical artists, or as perhaps with a new group sometime in the near future!

Most of the night is a blur. What I remember: everything is loud and fast and thrilling. What I remember: the three of us dancing, jumping around and twisting our bodies with abandon. The reflections of the disco ball like a million pieces of colored glass. What I remember: Shawn coming up behind me, his sweaty skin sliding against mine, his voice low in my ear, Baby. What I remember: Annie, laughing, pulling me onto the dance floor and spinning me around like I was the girl. What I remember: feeling breathless and joyous and invincible. We loved the city, we loved each other.

Second in intensity to the regret of hating their bodies is the wish of the dying that they had appreciated their bodies in the course of their lives... So they talk about their favorite memories of their bodies.... And dancing. So many stories about dancing. I can't count the hundreds of times people--more men than women--have closed their eyes and said, when describing USO dances during World War II...or long exuberant nights dancing at roadhouses and discos and barns and whereever else there were bodies and music, "If I had only known, I would ahve danced more.

Saucebox had the general feel of an upmarket gallery, although more mellow lighting. White walls, big art, black dance floor that was a bitch to clean, and mirrors everywhere. No disco balls for Saucebox. Xavier didn’t do kitsch, or cheap, or corny. The lighting was recessed and subtle, except over the bar where the bottles glowed in backlit glory. And everything that needed lighting had it, especially the till, because money and alcohol were taken seriously.

While in Hanoi, I gave a speech at the Vietnam national university. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The speech was an unremarkable review of the development of the U.S.-Vietnamese military relationship over the preceding fifteen years. But my reception was quite extraordinary. As I entered the hall, funky dance and disco music was blaring, strobe lights were flashing, and the audience—many young military officers but also a lot of young female students—was applauding, whistling, and carrying on. I knew that the only way I would ever get such a rock star’s reception would be at the order of a dictatorship.

18 “Cybotron coincided with the birth of a sound known as ‘electro,’ presumably a shortening of ‘electronic funk.’ Electro was one of the great dance music developments of the early 1980s that was neither a derivation nor an extension of disco. Instead, it was a ‘switched-on’ funk variant, exaggerating the electronic sounds that Midwestern groups like Parliament-Funkadelic had perfected in the studio and brought onstage. Most critics point to New York, however, for the genre's watershed moment.” Dan Sicko, Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk [1999] (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 45.