October 2009 Archives

Can Streetdance make Preston hip? Lara doubts it.

Last Wednesday night I went to a Streetdance class in Preston. There are many things I love about Lancashire. Preston isn’t one of them. Nearby Bolton has its civic pride, Blackpool has its tongue in cheek charms, but Preston?

Preston’s biggest claim to fame may be the Battle of Preston, when Cromwell beat the Scots. But a hundred years later Prestonites were cheering on Bonnie Prince Charlie and his mates as they passed through the town heading south. I don’t think Prestonites really cared much who won. Because Prestonites are essentially sheep people, weavers of wool. In the 19th century the town was churning out clothes faster than you can say ‘Primark’ and Dickens reputedly used Preston as inspiration for the town in his book ‘Hard Times’. Today the factories of Dickens’ day sit like huge red brick mausoleums round the edge of the town, while on the high street girls buy miniskirts (made in India) which they wear as they queue up for the disco in the northern drizzle of a Friday night.

To get to the dance studio I drive past Preston Prison and down London Road. (Does London Road really end in London? I suspect it circles back on itself to take you back to Preston. A cruel trick the town planners have been playing on Prestonites for years to stop them from thinking that better places exist.) I eventually find the studio above a second hand car sales garage on a dark stretch of dual carriageway. The studio’s newly furnished with floor to ceiling mirrors, a sprung dance floor and surround sound yet something about it’s depressing. A sunbed-leathered woman takes my money at the door while she talks to someone else. I creep past her, round the edge of the dancefloor where a streetdance class for teenagers is taking place. Sitting at a table at the dancefloor’s edge I watch the adolescent females strut their stuff. Only there’s not much strutting going on. They look insecure and unsure of their moves. This is what it’s like to be a teenager, I remind myself. But it’s more than that. The teacher, a London Streetdance star with elastic limbs patiently repeats: ‘Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight’. But still they’re not getting it. Why?

A few mums watch on from neighbouring tables. One of them has brought a little dog with her, the sort that would bite you if it got the chance. It frees itself and runs across the dancefloor behind the teenagers who are too busy concentrating on their moves to notice.

Then it is our turn, the adults. We are fourteen women and one man. Why? We’re mostly white, even though Preston is pretty ethnically diverse. Why? But most striking of all: we’re mostly miserable. Why?

We start with star jumps. I am knackered after five minutes but notice that the teacher isn’t joining in. When we start the routine he’s good at explaining the moves but interrupts from time to time to talk about the fashion show where he was made to wear embarrassing shorts, or about his mate who’s got a recording contract, or about some song I’ve never heard. He’s trying to reach out to us, the dancers, but no one speaks or laughs. Why?

Why didn’t streetdance in Lancashire do it for me? Perhaps there’s something odd about going to a studio to be taught a dancestyle that was improvised on the street. Perhaps it’s the aggressive music. Or perhaps it’s because Preston hasn’t made streetdance its own yet. The streetdance class has yet to develop its equivalent of ‘The Lancashire Cuddle’ and the talented teacher from London could do with understanding that. We’re not from the hood here, we’re not that angry, we don’t really fight, we just go to work, come home, watch tele and get on with it. This is Preston, luv. We may have crap streets but if you want to understand us you need to come inside, have a chat, a cup of tea and a hobnob. Hobnob: that’s a biscuit, luv, not a dance move.

Baby George learns to speak... (read more)

Ripe stench by the road alerts me:
It’s rambutan time of year.

It’s late and the roads are as near
to deserted as ever they’ll be.

We don’t slow as we pass by them,
these mountains of spikey red fruit

and the salesmen hunched over their loot
with a small gas fire to guard them.

I don’t want to eat their white flesh
but to know they’re there tonight,

tomorrow and all July’s nights
feeds me. I cannot rest.

(Colombo, July 2008)

In Lancashire, sixty year old farmers don their best shirts on a Tuesday night and head out to salsa, while teenage girls cake their faces with make-up and wait for instructions on how to body pop. Lara investigates. First up: Salsa.

The Time: Autumn. 7.15p.m. Just about time to get home from work, turn around, pick up your dancing shoes and go to:

The Scene: A sports club hall, somewhere in the north of England. Wooden floors have been mopped clean of last night’s spilt beers. Across the long bar at one side of the hall, metal shutters are opening up. Disco lights and tall speakers sit heavily on a stage. In the main space we find:

The Hero: The dance teacher. His sixtieth birthday party was a night to remember but he’s turned out to party every night. The beard is well-trimmed, the black and white brogues well-polished and his smile welcomes each new and returning dancer that enters the room. His wife sits at the door taking £5.50 from:

The Cast: The youngest is about 18. She wears tight jeans and scuffed trainers. The oldest is pushing seventy and wears a smart blue shirt, tucked in, belted slacks and metal-framed glasses. Inbetween are the newly weds (he’s dancing so she’ll let him watch the football on t.v.), the about to wed (practising for their wedding dance), the looking for a date (the old farmer who’s wife’s died), the recently divorced (he couldn’t dance anyway), the coming with her mates (it’s more fun than the gym) and those like me, who just love to dance. Later on we’ll meet:

The Chorus: They turn up when the boring bits are over and the floor is full, the Latin vibes are pumping and they can swing into the centre spinning on their suede-soled shoes and push their hips like a gearstick around a girl’s soft-swishing skirt. They don’t dance with beginners but they make the beginners want to learn to dance like that. Not quite one of them yet, but almost is:

Patrick Swayze (R.I.P.): His pert little buttocks sit neatly in tight jeans. His brightly-coloured shirts are like a peacock’s backside. This male approaches the mating dance like the tournament it ought to be. Each turn is done with precision, each new movement carefully memorised, practised in his sleep. He doesn’t like it if his dance partner gets it wrong. It makes him look bad. When he smiles he doesn’t move his eyes.

‘Next up we’re gunna do the cock archer,’ says the younger male dance teacher, the one with the gold chain and the thick Lancashire accent. I snigger. He looks at me and then at the female dance teacer.

‘It is called the cockarcher, innit?’ he asks her. She nods. ‘Aye, the cuc-acca.’

‘Right then, we’ll do four basics, two cross body turns, two cuddles, two basics and two cockarchers.’

I suspect that the ‘cuddle’ is a salsa move not found much in Cuba, indeed, not found much outside of Lancashire. It involves the woman turning so that she has her back to the man and he can ‘cuddle’ her from behind. If he likes. There is nothing raunchy or sleazy about a cuddle though and any cuddle you might get here is the sort you could give to your grandmother.

Later as I leave the beginners group behind and ascend to the dizzy heights of the intermediates, more physical contact is recommended by means of ‘the wiggle’. If performed in a non-Lancashire fashion, the wiggle might be compared to grinding. The woman faces the man and has the opportunity to rub herself across his front. Only in Lancashire when I practised the routine that included ‘the wiggle’ with Paul (forty, large, bald and perspiring but very patient and very friendly) the sultry movement morphed into one reminiscent of windscreen wipers, ticking rigidly from side to side. Paul is just one of several kind, older and experienced dancers that I have met at my salsa class, who bravely try to tame my own wild dancing style into something less likely to do injury to others. I have two new friends, both in their sixties, who have taught me other non-Latin sounding moves such as the ‘Half-Titanic’ and ‘Magic Hands.’ Last week one of them complimented me on my choice of floral dress and thereafter invited me to dance with a cheeky nod, saying, ‘Cum on then, Daisy.’

I love dancing in Lancashire. Each week when it finishes, I walk into the carpark in my flimsy salsa dress, oblivious to the cold as I am hot and euphoric from the dancing and filled with a joy for life. At about 9.30p.m each Tuesday night, a hundred or so people gather for what is nick-named ‘The Bachata Barn Dance’, so-called because it is danced in a circle, with the men staying in one place in an inner circle while the women on the outer circle move from man to man. The first time I danced it I started off with a Greek man who told me that the dance was called ‘The Ciabatta’. Who knows, maybe it is in Greece.