Two months ago I moved to London and found it a disorientating experience. Most of my friends were already settled when I got here, and I found myself overwhelmed, isolated and always on the wrong Circle line train. Everyone seemed to have their ‘thing’; something they belonged to. What was mine?
I tried a 5 a.m. run club. It was horrendous. I tried the East London conceptual art scene, but couldn’t keep a straight face. Then one Friday night I found myself in church, but not for a prayer service. This church was deconsecrated, converted and the activity that evening was something called ‘ecstatic dance’. Yet the setting was appropriate because, as I discovered, for wellness-obsessed millennials and Gen Zers, ecstatic dance is a sort of religion. It’s a place where my generation can feel they belong, and where the quest for transcendence is alive and grooving.
Ecstatic dance is a DJ-led sober dance party. According to Urubu Collective, who organised my dance, it ‘supports your free expression of emotions and inner space through movement and music’ and allows you to ‘unleash your wild dancing self without caring what people think, claim your freedom and touch the infinite’. The rules are simple: no shoes, no drugs and most definitely no deodorant.
When I entered the heated room to meet my fellow dancers, I knew immediately that I had understood the dress code wrong. Among the palazzo pants and 100 per cent hemp, my all-black athleisure set wasn’t doing the trick. I was relieved that I at least forgot to shave my armpits.
Our facilitator for the evening, a female DJ, stepped up to the deck, where a woman in a flower crown started playing something called ‘handpan techno’. ‘Let your inner space guide your dance – move however it wants you to,’ she called out to the crowd.
A woman draped in white cloth slunk around the room. Someone’s dad was already going for it, closing his eyes and waving his arms around. Soon the room was pulsing with swaying, quivering bodies. At first I felt incredibly awkward. We newcomers were told we must make and maintain eye contact with other dancers as we moved around. It was as if the normal social codes had been reversed. Then the MC instructed us to ‘become’ different animals and to move as if we were our chosen animal.
I was deeply impressed by the number of people who really committed to this. Perhaps our animal might say hello to another that crosses its path, the handpan woman suggested. I chose a monkey: a terrible decision, as I found myself ‘Oooh ahh ahh’-ing in a standoff with a middle-aged woman turned silverback gorilla. Someone chose a fish, which involved a lot of ‘floor work’. I’d never seen a bear and peacock interact before (it ends how you imagine). The males, alpha wolves or big cats, preyed on the females, deer and antelope.
I inadvertently made eye contact with a sweaty bald man on the other side of the room. I’m reasonably used to sweaty bald men approaching me in clubs and my usual reaction is to flee or at least to cover my drink. Thankfully, this one convulsed away when I didn’t return his bird squawk.
We continued our dance, this time to thumpier music than the handpans. It was getting sweaty. On my right two bodies were caressing each other. They ended in a heap in the corner. Their animals definitely said hello. After nearly an hour, I started to ease out of my rigidity. I actually did feel an unthinking freedom – it seemed like for as long as the dance was going on, anything went. I moved without purpose and bumped into bodies.
After the dancing we gathered in a circle for a ceremony. We passed around a drink made with cacao powder and I sipped the bitter liquid, while a soft hum rose and swelled. We chanted: ‘We gather here together, our hearts connected as one, cacaocita medicina, guide us.’ And before I knew it, I was added to a WhatsApp group intended for people to make new friends in London.
Urubu Collective offers a whole host of other events, including ‘bioenergetics’, ‘shaking medicine’ and ‘system reset’ classes. The ‘cuddle community’ caught my eye: a ‘touch-positive, non-sexual, soothing’ group offering bi-weekly meetings in Islington. The criteria for attending include ‘craving community connection’.
I didn’t feel exactly ecstatic in the ecstatic dance community but I have to admit I was tempted to accept the invitation to the full-moon ritual that popped up later on my group chat. I was looking for a community in London that existed outside of the pub. Could this be it? Or perhaps I should just go back to my parents’ for the weekend.
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