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.
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