I'm reading king suckerman by pelecanos now and was just today being struck when i read a passage where some people have a small party at their house to drink and smoke, and the couples dance together (it's set in dc in 76). And how little of that I think happens these days. Like a get-together where two or three couples dance, each with their partner, together in a living room. Nowadays not like that at all.
Also, how cool is it that on this list serve one post might reference: 1. Elija Anderson 2. This study about dancing and the hood, and 3. White Men Can't Jump!
LBO-awesome.
For a funny version of it, see White Men Can't Jump. But
> also see Katrina Hazard Gorden who wrote about all this in reference to
> street dance culture. Gordon notes that paired couple, free form dancing
> (from which soul train's line emerged) was a common form of street dancing
> when the economy was more stable and people oriented themselves toward
> coupling and marriage. When that fell apart, for her it begain with the
> legalization of gambling, it ripped out from underneath the urban economy
> an entire way of hustling to support oneself. Consequently, combined with
> deinudstrialization, Gordon sees the rise of solo dancing and the decline
> of paired, coupled street dancing competition -- which reflects a change in
> the normative patterns also going on in the rest of the country.)