Reflections of a Disco Infiltrator, Part 4: Roxanne's

In my last column, I covered some of the evolution of the Broward indie parties that developed near the time of my run as a disco infiltrator/performance artist in the club scene, as well as trying to recall various dancing maneuvers. Here, I catch them at the peak.

The pinnacle of indie Thursday-night parties (and my routine), to my

recollection, was called Phoenix, and it was held at a club called

Roxanne's mostly in 2006. By the time Roxanne's opened, I was already in dancing shape. I had a

basic costume (the short shorts that D-Wade mocks Charles Barkley for

wearing in the T-mobile fave five commercials)

and a tank top. This contrasted well with the bulk of the more

fashionable crowd, though I do recall being told by a few key people

that I should wear tight jeans and that wearing girl's jeans was the

rage. Eventually, I found some of those jeans, and I would walk around

the club pointing at my jeans loudly declaring "girl's jeans"! I got a

great deal of fashion mileage out of that.

I asked a former DJ, John Lovell,

what he remembered of my dance attack, and he wrote that "seeing you do

your thing on the dance floor was hilarious at first, for obvious

reasons. You're moving around like a crazy person. Not really making too

much sense. But once I saw you do this on a regular basis, it really

started affecting me, and it dawned on me that it wasn't just funny and

weird... it was brilliant. And I loved it."

A few more moves that played well inside of club social dynamics:

1. Marching is a great way to be next to people who are

cutting loose. It also allows you to slowly move through the dance

floor. Marching in place works too.

2. If marching isn't your speed and you need to get to the bar or

bathroom (or outside of the club so you can get a drink from the car

bar), then the best move was an odd aspect to lively dance floors. The

way to move anywhere on the floor is to get low to the ground and run

like you're a small person. This will sound as if you're going to crash

into everyone, but once you learn the move -- I did this by trial and

error -- you can duck and pop back up

anywhere on the floor. This probably is one for the reenactment.

3. The queen's wave was usually mixed with marching.

It was a great reflection of all things pretentious that can be

encountered in these types of social settings. Or if you just feel like

doing the queen's wave while you're marching around. Queen's wave (AKA

the politician's wave) was usually mixed with marching.

This routine served me well for most 2005-06 as I developed it by

trial and error, motivated by boredom and whiskey and a sense of why the

hell not. But I ended up dealing with a kind of opposition that was

much different and much more of the organized variety than your garden-variety stuff I encountered in Broward. In the middle of 2006, I began

going to the party in Miami that Crush was modeled after: Poplife. A

matter we'll delve into next week unless I take a quick break to do some

dance floor reenactments or maybe do some coverage of the Democratic

Party's annual Jefferson Jackson dinner that I attended last weekend.

Evan Rowe is a local songwriter and performer best-known as

and how they relate to our region.