"Whatever the environment, dance is about joy. No one dances and feels rubbish after – unless, maybe, you’ve slipped over onto your arse. But go to any club night worth its merit and you’ll be confronted with people from all walks of life. And that is the dancefloor at its most powerful" - The Face presents Emma Warren's new book, 'Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor'. It "places direct emphasis on movement. It’s not all about clubs; it’s about dancing as a primal need." The author writer “there’s evidence that shows when people move in synchrony together, they rate each other more highly, after swinging their arms about together in the same way. That obviously has an effect on relationships between people who experience the world differently.”

"Streaming music has cultivated a new breed of creators who seem to be totally in the dark about what a DJ does in the first place. As a result we have what’s almost a new format of music that broadly fits into the parameters of club music, but will almost certainly never be played in a club — or by any DJ at all" - 5 Mag looks into the issue of dance music today being made for the purpose of being streamed, rather than danced to. "A fairly large number of people who declare themselves making deep house and techno are doing so in ignorance of DJ culture, with music that is almost hostile to DJing".

"Every time I pop out, I keep running into fools talking on the dancefloor. Just standing around, chitty-chatting" - Michelle Lhooq is frustrated and angry in her latest post. She also gives the oblivious a scientific explanation of the dancefloor: "The key to a popping dancefloor is ENERGY CIRCULATION. The DJ opens the portal and radiates nrg through the speakers, which disseminates through the dancers and twists into an atmospheric vortex. So when Chatty Kathys cluster by the DJ booth, ya’ll create ENERGY BLOCKS right at the power source, siphoning radiance with your black hole of self-absorption. This is not your aunty’s tea party. We out here exorcising demons. Out here for dissolution, for relief, for fucking feeling something—not networking!!!".

Russian figure skater Alexandra Trusova won a silver medal for her performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She danced to Florence and the Machine’s 'Call Me Cruella' and the Stooges classic 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'.

The MIT Press Reader published what is actually a funny essay about the first reactions to waltz when it came to Germany and France at the beginning of the 18th century: "The German poet Ernst Moritz Arndt described the French 'nationalization of this German dance' in moralizing terms: The closed-couple hold, he said, allowed the male dancers to squeeze “the lady dancers as close as possible against themselves” while placing their hands “firmly on the breasts” of their partners... Partners experimented with a vertigo whose centrifugal force and intoxication 'exhausted' their bodies and 'heated' their imaginations. Through touch, the exchange of perspiration, and a rapidity that solicited the imaginations of the dancers embracing one another, the dazzling intimacy of the waltz was said to produce a ravishment that — according to the doctors who described it — menaced the health of an entire generation of youth" - 🙂 .

"This year, we finally got to dance together again. But due to dodgy drugs, heightened concerns about women’s safety and the politically polarising impact of the pandemic, the euphoria was tainted with a darker vibe" - The Face looks back at the UK dance scene in 2021. The writer Chal Ravens adds: "The history of club culture demonstrates that raving was never intended to be a government-sanctioned activity; dance music has almost always existed in opposition to the state and its racist and homophobic laws. But the healthy suspicion of authority that permeates the nightlife milieu is useless without an analysis on which to base our grievances. A tinfoil hat is not a political position".

New York Times Magazine published an essay by Carina del Valle Schorske, 'Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief', which centers on the desire of people who've spent months in lockdown to be with others - "I needed my physique to affect and be influenced by different our bodies — this time not as a vector of illness however as a vector of pure feeling". Dada Strain looks somewhat deeply into it - "not just people’s need for simple contact, but for mass movement in improvised unison, for socially engaging rhythm, and for devising instants of momentary intimacy, locking into primordial practices of celebration and mourning".

A lovely documentary 'The Dancing Man of LA' about a grey-haired 69-year-old who goes to, well, almost to all the concerts in Los Angeles, and dances all the time. Howard Mordoh is a retired clinical laboratory scientist from and his "love of concerts spans genres, venues, and decades - and he's always dancing. But with live music canceled during the COVID pandemic, and given his husband's health concerns, Howard has to get creative in order to keep dancing".

The global dance music industry in 2021 is worth $3.4 billion, The 2021 IMS Business Report shows. The number is culled largely from the sales of software and hardware, which were up 23% this year as a result of the pivot to livestreaming, giving a total of $1.1 billion, along with music sales and streaming - valued at $1 billion, artist earnings - $0.3 billion, and clubs and festivals, hich accounted for $1 billion, a number based on Q1 being largely normal and China being open for more than a quarter. The IMS Report valuation is at the lowest it has been in a decade and is a sharp decline from the 2020 valuation of $7.3 billion and the all-time high valuation of $7.4 billion in 2016. There's also good news: the value of festival tickets sold is up 123% when comparing March through May of 2021 to March through May of 2019, Billboard reports.

A hilarious article by Tracy Clark-Flory for Jezebel about men displaying their power with air-sex: "When I think of stage humping, I think of a man thrusting against the floor in a modified pushup, an enactment of missionary screwing that presupposes a very long, and soon to be broken, dick... Recently, I came across similar moves on TikTok and was reminded, once again, of men making love to the floor. And I thought: From whence the floor grind? It was time to investigate this important topic".

'Xeno' examines a brief yet intimate encounter between two strangers, against the backdrop of a barren hillside in Montreal (watch it below). It is a part of Films.Dance series, which also features original music by Berlin-based artists Alice Phoebe Lou and Thor Rixon. 'Xeno' is a part of a series of 15 free films shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, which have involved the participation of more than 150 artists from 25 countries. All of the Films.Dance programme so far can be seen at the project’s website.

Dr. Cornel West talked to Beatport about the origination of house and techno by African American creators, going into the philosophy of black music. West argues it is a vessel to travel through time and be connected with time and space. He also discusses the hijacking of music made by black people.

SOHH shares an amazing video of UCLA Bruins gymnastics dancer Nia Dennis showing off big moves while dancing (gymnasticing?!?) to hip-hop classics. The star athlete delivers jaw-dropping moves dancing to Kendrick Lamar and 2Pac.

"Perhaps dancing is the thing I miss most of all at the moment. I don’t go out clubbing that often but it is on the dance floor that I find that rush of euphoria, that glorious mix of privacy and connection that you get in a room full of strangers, all caught up in the thrill of the music, the buzz of the moment" - Tracey Thorn of the Everything but the Girl, wrote in New Statesman about being in lockdown. So she started working out at home through online classes - and so it happens that she ends up practicing to one of her own songs...