NYC's Hottest Athletic Craze is Learning to Rave
My roommate texted me yesterday that she couldn’t make her workout through Class Pass, offering me the spot instead. She told me it was an avant-garde cardio class called “Dance Church,” so with my background in dance and nothing to do that night, I happily accepted.
On the studio’s website, the class is described as a “guided improvisational dance fitness class” which sounded like a paradox to me, but I was excited to try something new. I headed to Mark Morris studio, a Mecca in downtown Brooklyn known for its wide range of dance styles, and wondered if I was in for a spiritual reckoning.
Though I pictured the class would be in a typical small, bright studio, when I arrived, I was surprised to enter a massive room taking up the entire floor of the building. There was no equipment, and the space was enveloped in darkness. The only source of light emanated from a set of neon disco lights, casting a gleam on the faces of people flowing into the giant dark room. Rather than the harmony of a Sunday service, I felt like I was in an obscure Brooklyn warehouse party.
Lively chatter filled the space as the churchgoers beside me formed a large circle around the room, I got the sense this class had many regulars. Then, the instructor took her place at the center of the circle, and silence gripped the masses.
At once, upbeat rhythmic music boomed through the surround sound, and our collective prayer began. The teacher started with dynamic stretching, and the circle of dancers would see her movement and copy, like a disco version of “Simon Says.” After we were warmed up, the instructor started making small, clubbing movements, either pumping her fist or raising her hands up in the air. Mirroring her motions, I watched around me as the class began to fracture from the guided dance. Their movement would begin with the teacher's same hand pump, then spread to their chests and lower bodies. People began to convert each guided movement into their own and move their whole bodies to the pulsing music.
I stared in disbelief as the zealots of the class took to the floor, or began spinning and jumping, feeling the force of sound penetrate their muscles. Timid still, I continued modeling the teacher’s simpler movements as the crowds devolved into subsections of dance styles. Occasionally, a corner of the room would develop its own intuitive motion, thrashing about, and everyone in that corner would do the same.
As the movements intensified, so too did the expressions of the people in the class. Shouts of glee and forceful moans escaped from the dancers as their bodies contorted to the waves of music, a fervor built and rippled along the circle.
The picture before me resembled the spiritual catharsis of evangelicals purging themselves of sin, breaking down into screams and shutters when touched by the spirit. I would say I’d never seen anything like it, but that’s not entirely true. To me, the class was a contrived meditation to reach the status of techno heads at a rave.
Personally, I used to hate techno music and its dippy, futuristic sound. That is, until I got a taste living in Spain for a year where the culture of techno was far more evolved. It was only once I was in the physical space of a techno club that I saw its purpose. Without words, drops or breaks in the music, the listeners are forced to move blindly to the speed and sounds that compel them. It becomes about every individual’s connection to the music within the collective, and techno culture creates this uniquely free, feeling space, which makes sense as it was originally a form of rebellion.
Born out of Detroit by young black men in the 1980s, techno came from aspirations of European ideals, contrasting against the bleak industrial landscape of the decaying American city. Since then, techno reached new heights in Europe, wherein cities like Berlin, it is a cultural mainstay. Techno continues to represent a pushback to conventional spaces, attitudes and cultures of consuming art. Instead of reacting with the assumption of how one should respond, techno music necessitates an individualized expression of what is felt intuitively in the moment.
As I watched the people beside me shake and convulse in dance church, I understood what this class was all about. At first, it seemed pretty silly to pay for a dance class that was just an hour-long guided rave. But for many, working in the city and living restrictive corporate lifestyles, they rarely experience the freedom of dance and music for fear of judgement, and itch for a divine release.
I realized this dance class provides an answer to a vacuum in our own culture. After the major underground party scenes that defined NYC club culture were desecrated by Guliani, and the pandemic forced us back into the confines of our homes, people have yearned for a third space of freedom.
In dance church, with the room’s veil of darkness and loud music, people can fully commit to physical expression without the worry of how they’re perceived. The popularity of this class speaks to how restrictive public spaces have become, even when it comes to consuming art. Pablo Picasso once said, “the purpose of art is to cleanse the dust of our daily lives from our souls,” and though we all carry this dust, it seems like these days there are fewer places to shower it.
Art is meant to be evocative, provocative even. We’re meant to gasp and shout and feel together as we endure the sensations of music, theater and dance, and unify in this release. Art boldly exposes the truths of our society, and yet, we are expected to refrain from bold reactions. Nowadays, it feels like in order to grasp great art we must confine ourselves to a level of decorum, the hush of a linoleum art studio, or the suffocating elegance of the ballet. The consumption of art has been co-opted by stuffy elites for far too long, and people require an escape. If art showcases the culture of our time, then dance church tells us we need reformed public spaces to feed our souls. Because as all great art begins with rebellion, participating in the feeling of art is the closest we’ll get to divinity without going to church.