This week’s Dance First Member Insight is brought to you by Dance Jam in Berkeley, California. Dance First members are sharing their insights and inspirations during this troubled time, as well as how they are coping. Plus links to live streams and online offerings for you.
Dear Dancers
Like many of our fellow dance leaders, DJs, and facilitators, we found our weekly live event suddenly shut down in early March. Dance Jam in Berkeley is one of the longest running ‘barefoot-freestyle’ community dances in the United States, dating back to the bicentennial year of 1976.
Decades before the term ‘ecstatic dance’ came into popular use, community events around the country like Dance Jam were quietly and consciously operating under the radar of other mainstream music movements such as Psychedelia, the Disco Era, Punk Rock, the Rave Years, Grunge, and Emo.
The stewardship of our dance has passed from hand-to-hand like a baton at a relay race over the years. It was a loose collective in the early years. When that ran its course Ken Martini stepped forward to manage it, operating under the name Dance Journey for a few years. He passed it on to two of his staffers who renamed it Ecstatic Dance Berkeley and ran it as such for less than a year.
In the summer of 2015 their tenure ended abruptly and it looked as if the dance might be permanently shuttered. That’s when I raised my hand and volunteered to assume the responsibility and do my best to restore the relationship with the building management and return the dance to the good graces of the community.
My first move was to revive the original name Dance Jam and to return to the traditional musical programming of various genres of dance music from different eras. A year or so later we made the decision to go 100% analog and only use the vinyl format, playing records on a pair of turntables. Most recently, with the help of a core group of dancers, we’ve re-opened ‘The Warm Room’ to provide a second somatic space for contact improv and community connection.
One of our traditions during the ‘Welcome Circle’ that we pause for about 45 minutes into the dance is to ask who is attending for the first time, and who has been coming for 10, 20, 30, or more years. It’s super gratifying to see a handful of regulars who have been part of the Dance Jam community for over 40 years raise their hands. Our resident artist Lauren, known as Painter Dancer, in the photo above, is one of our most well-loved patrons!
Since the lockdown started I immediately set up a streaming service so that our dancers could easily tune in at the same time each week. Our primary channel is the hi-fidelity Mixlr platform, an audio-only service used by DJs and online radio hosts around the world.
With Mixlr as our primary platform we’ve been experimenting with various video streaming and interactive platforms such as Zoom and Facebook Live. It’s a work-in-progress that’s been a personal learning curve for me as a DJ as well. I find that trying to focus on multiple Zoom Rooms while staying in the vinyl-spinning DJ groove to be rather disembodying, while simply mixing records in the audio stream and broadcasting a video of the turntables is much more in alignment with my usual DJ flow.
We’re extremely grateful to have a few of our more financially secure dancers chipping in via our Patreon Page to help support our studio rent obligations for the time being. Our dance may be shut down, but our studio rent still has to be paid, and the responsibility is mine. At the same time, we feel that our live audio stream should be open and available to all, so any visitor to our Patreon Page can first see the levels of contribution before grabbing the link.
One thing is for sure, once we can dance again in-person, we’ll keep streaming our audio live from the dance floor. Having dancers tune in from across the country and around the world has been super-gratifying and something we will want to continue.
As a DJ it’s really heartwarming to touch people with my music during the lockdown that otherwise wouldn’t be dancing. A lot of our recent listeners are folks from elsewhere who would never be able to come to Dance Jam anyway. When they comment in real-time that my music is providing a huge relief from the stress it’s a real joy. I snap photos of the album covers and post them in a thread on social media as I spin.
Music is a healing force and reliable way of raising consciousness from a distance. If the lockdown is helping us learn how to share it more widely and reach more people, then we can be thankful for that, the world is going to need it!
DJ Mark “Ameba” Metz
Dance Jam Host/Resident DJ/Musical Director
Dance Jam Online
Every Friday Night – 8:30 – 11:30pm PST
