Evan Rowe is a local songwriter and performer best-known as
Catalonia, a professor of political science and history at Broward
College, and a small-d democratic strategist with no party affiliation.
Each week, we surrender our space for his thoughts on the music industry
and how they relate to our region. This week, part three of Evan's past in the club scene.
In part two of my disco infiltrator series, we'll verbally describe my moves -- because as time elapses, I am losing valuable witnesses to this time period. But some remain. DJ Eric Michael K notes that the "Bunny hop was the softer side of Evan's dance floor persona. I still
remember him luring unsuspecting curious newcomers into his dance ritual
and then completely switching it up to the raptor and freaking them
out. No rhythm. No reason. Just complete and utter dance floor enigma.
Genius? Legend? Hero? You be the judge."
Until I can get the nerve to re-create the raptor on a weekly basis,
it's going to have to suffice for me to analyze this to no end and to
think of things that used to just come to me in the moment. Between
2005, and early 2006, the 954 scene moved around. First, from the Rose and Crown pub where Isaac Alexander
was throwing a party called Crush. This party, like the one noted in
the second link, moved around. My performance act didn't really hit its
stride at any venue until they moved the party to a club called Tabu (it was once the Metal Factory),
which was located on Oakland Park Boulevard. This place had a sizable dance floor,
and it had a thin enough crowd to allow me to test out my dancing
maneuvers -- but a turnover high enough to have enough new people to test
it out on. A perfect balance to many of my maneuvers was to have enough
people who would know the routine in the club -- and enough new people to
make it interesting.
Not in any particular order, I would
introduce a variety of moves. Some moves, like the raptor, are
physically taxing. They require a low to the ground quadriceps load, as
well as extending high on the ankle, a gonzo facial expression, and
extremely awkward gait. That's the best I can do, seeing is believing
and I'll recreate this and put it up on YouTube. Needless to say, you
can't exactly do this all night long, but it was an absolute core go-to
move if I encountered snootiness or needed to set the tone.
Other dances, required more gonzo subtlety. Patron Philip Azevedo says that the "raptor
was fun, [but] i kinda enjoyed bubble catcher
the most i think". The "bubble catcher" was also known as the "firefly catcher." This move required off the beat bouncing to the music
which culminates in a leap and hand clap of imaginary fireflies followed
by periodically wiping the firefly on your face (which, if done in real
life would leave glowing fire fly guts if I am not mistaken).
Another
core type of move was pausing maneuvers which allowed me to continue to
stay in character, but didn't physically wipe me out. One dance that I
recall was the Pat Riley maneuver. The Pat Riley was essentially
coaching the dance floor. He would encouragingly clap at whatever the
hell he wanted to clap at, but in a coaching sort of way. He could call
time outs and go get water (I assure you, nobody else in the club
called a time out before getting water from the bar), and be outraged at
imaginary fouls occurring on the dance floor. The Pat Riley maneuver
was a compliment to another long time move I've used on dance floors for
some time now: My low post dance moves. This was an entirely
alternative way to back that ass up. A matter to which we'll return.
I'm
going to hunt down a couple of quotes for next week, but that's three
dances laid out as we move onward with the story, names, places, faces,
maneuvers.
