Dancing as politics

Since the modern dance culture began to form in the second half of the 20th century, the state and its representatives showed at least alertness to it. Politicians in any country and under any regimes are suspicious of uncontrolled meetings of people. Dancing always personified the freedom of movement, feelings and thoughts. The white youth of the 1950s wanted to spit on the prejudices of the elders about the music of blacks. Young residents of depressed British town of the late 1980s in a new, incomprehensible and frightening adult music found a way to escape from boring reality. Sometimes dance music became a harbinger of grandiose social changes - whether it was the fall of an iron curtain or a loosening of conservative prejudices. And sometimes her adherents for the same reasons fell into disgrace or subjected to repression.

We have chosen several brightest episodes from the “political history” of dance music, each of which reveals social metamorphoses of his time.