The Darling Spot
I rock my head back as my elbows and shoulder blades turn inward in response to the pulsating groove. My hips sink and then thrust sharply to the side as my feet become two independent mallets drumming the floor and my core reacts to the deep, steady base beat. My arms swing off to the sides and then circle their way up, motioning towards my friend across the small, steamy cement room. The glorious melody cruises through the tall stack of black speakers in the corner, which vibrate as if they too long to be a dancing body in the space.
It is in this communal riff that all else fades away except the conversations improvised on the dance floor – conversations instigated by the DJ’s polyrhythmic sound waves traversing the room; conversations between intricate rhythms at play within my own body; and of course, conversations flowing amongst the vibrant, dancing bodies.
Within this heightened sensorial and deeply embodied experience comes the release – the moment of ecstasy that is oh-so-hard to put into words. In fact, it is the absence of words, as well as thinking, that allows one to be transported to a utopic experience in which all vibrations in a space intermingle to create a perfect storm of movement and sound and expression. And what’s more, it is ephemeral and fleeting – a moment that departs as fast as it arrives, leaving an indelible imprint.
Many artists have drawn inspiration from what may be similar experiences. Bob Marley tells of “a natural mystic blowing through the air,” the Beach Boys sing about “good vibrations,” and Madonna encourages her listeners to “get into the groove…let the music set you free.” I’ve heard jazz musicians talk about the sensation of “playing in the pocket.” And I especially adore the reference of the “Sender” – a slang word used among swing dancers from the 1930s to the 1950s. Ralph Waldo Ellison described the “sender” as a highly skilled musician who would “send you at some big dance…into the ecstasy of rhythm and memory and brassy affirmation of the goodness of being alive and part of the community.” *
When I talk about this emotion – the blissful experience on the dance floor – I like to simply call it, the “Darling Spot.” Why? Well, my journey to the Darling Spot began as a young girl…
I used to dream about dancing to Prince and Michael Jackson songs, but had little confidence to try dancing myself and my parents understandably refused to pay the grand amount required for dance lessons and fancy costumes at our local suburban dance studio. So I took a couple park and rec dance classes and when I reached high school, fully embraced swing dance, which was in the midst of a comeback. I was instantly addicted to the high-energy activity of moving in tandem with a partner on a dance floor.
Later, during college, I was swing dancing with a friend who was more advanced than me. A moment came within the fast-paced dance when he stopped us, as a dancing pair, yet I did not heed his signal, and moved awkwardly through his pause. After the dance, he told me, “You have to listen to the music. If it stops, you stop.” It was a simple instruction and exactly what I needed at the time. That one piece of advice opened up a world for me – it was as if I was suddenly given permission to dance in reaction to what I was feeling and hearing instead of what I was thinking.
Fast forward to my senior year of college when I traveled to Ghana for a course at the Dagara Music Center. My background in the performing arts was through Western music studies, though I had been taking West African drum lessons and continued to enjoy social dancing. As I began dance lessons at the center, I instantly noticed a change – an opening in myself. Both my physical body and my spiritual being resonated with the sound of drums and the movement style I was being taught. I was learning to listen and converse through my body.
Then one evening, my friends Eddie and Felix, who were staff at the center, took me out for a night of dancing in Medie – a small town on the outskirts of Accra where the center is based. I followed close behind them and their flashlights, making sure I didn’t stumble into a deep crevice in the red dirt path that led to the town’s main street. Eddie smiled at me with an anticipatory grin as we reached a small building made of concrete blocks. A blue and white hand-painted sign at the entrance read: “Darling Spot.” We ducked down off the main drag to reach a concrete patio with chairs and a small overhang that led us into a single, modest room – Medie’s dancehall. It was a hot, humid night, so we went straight towards a square opening in the cement wall revealing a bartender offering Ghana’s favorites – Club beer, Star beer and homemade apateshi. The three of us joined a handful of other Medie residents in that small, sticky room as we danced the night away to Ghanaian highlife tunes spun together by the talented DJ in the corner.
It was that night that I first fully experienced that special emotion on the dance floor. I found my “Darling Spot.”
* This notion of the “sender” served as lingo within the Lindy Hop scenes around the United States. In Joel Dinerstein’s Swinging The Machine, he explains the role of the “sender” in the social dance scene of the 1930s and 40s, referencing that Ralph Waldo Ellison described the “sender’s” role within the dance scene of early 1930s Kansas City. (Quote from page 60)
