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In the popular imagination, disco conjures up images of Studio 54, the celebrated New York 1970s nightclub, where hoards of would-be dancers queued up on a nightly basis, waving their arms frantically in an attempt to catch the eye of the venue's doorman, as if they were at an auction, bidding for their own lives. Disco also triggers thoughts of John Travolta, the star of Saturday Night Fever, striking his white-suited peacock pose of unrestrained Brooklyn machismo as he takes to the dance floor. And disco arouses "ear worms" that emit the shrill white pop of the Bee Gees, who stripped the genre of its black groove en route to becoming its best-selling band. Narcissistic mirrors, over-elaborate lighting systems and unfortunate fashion trends fill in a little more of this widely held perception, which includes everything except for progressive politics. Dig a little deeper, though, as I did in my research for my history of disco, Love Saves the Day, and the picture changes dramatically.

Bringing together the protagonists of gay liberation, the civil rights movement and the feminist movement, who gathered in the abandoned lofts and murky basements of a bankrupt New York, disco was born in cauldron conditions. Two epoch-defining venues, the Loft and the Sanctuary, initiated a new, radical practice of all-night, non-partnered dancing at the beginning of 1970, and disco culture held onto its countercultural potential until the summer of 1979, when Steve Dahl, an embittered Chicago rock DJ who resented the newfound cultural power African Americans, gay men and women had discovered through disco, detonated forty thousand disco records during a "disco sucks" rally.

Whereas the dance floor was once the place for Man to meet Woman, the Loft and the Sanctuary recast it as a multicultural, polymorphous, free-flowing space where individuals could let go of their everyday selves and dissolve into the mutating desire of the crowd. Marginalised in wider society, gay men and women, as well as ethnic groups ranging from African Americans to Puerto Ricans, were dominant on these dance floors, but crucially the experience was open to all. Disco was a rare example of New York's melting pot ethos put into practice.

Encouraged by the penetrating affect of amplified sound, the close proximity of other bodies, and the otherworldly effects of disorienting lights and psychotropic drugs, dancers sacrificed their individual egos to the creation of an amorphous, improvised flow of merging bodies and penetrative music ⎯ a circuit of collective energy that was greater than the sum of its parts. Entering into a creative relationship with the DJ, dancers participated in a democratic and collective form of music making that allowed them to experience their bodies as neither straight nor gay, but in a transformative circuit of affect and desire. Disco, above all, promised the liberation of the body and the arrival of a queer utopia.

Dance culture survived the "disco sucks" backlash, but disco, which had become an undeserving symbol for the moral and economic sickness of the recession-blighted United States, was beyond convalescence. Since 1980, dance music, which remains first and foremost an electronic mutation of disco, has gone through period cycles. It has flourished when sexual exploration is the zeitgeist, when women and gay men have been empowered, and when technological innovation has spurred on the creation of innovative sounds and rhythms. Yet dance culture has atrophied when the political terrain has turned hostile, as it has during times of war, or imagined immigrant/religious threat, or heightened heterosexual anxiety. Rock music and (for the last twenty-five years) rap have prospered during these periods, in part because they are in their element when politics is postural and confrontational. It is dance, however, that seems to offer the greatest social potential, and that potential can be traced back to the disco era.

Dance culture's scenes and sub-scenes now form a root-like network that its antagonists can barely understand, and this has made the cultural more resilient than its 1970s predecessor. The cultural terrain of the 1990s, however, has been hostile. The AIDS epidemic, the rise of neoliberal competition, the economic emasculation of black working class communities and "moral majority" strictures of Berlusconi, Blair and Bush have undermined dance culture's foundations. At times like these, dance can seem unintelligible. Organised around rhythm and sensation rather than lyrics and song, the culture can struggle to confront the major political crises of the day. Yet dance ⎯ arguably more than the cinema, the sports stadium, the theatre or the church ⎯ can function as an open, participatory, experimental, non-competitive community that is organised around progressive pleasure. By re-examining disco we can better understand its liberationist potential.



Translated by Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri.