Dance Your Way Home

This book is about the kind of ordinary dancing you and I might do in our kitchens when a favourite tune comes on. It's more than a social history: it's a set of interconnected histories of the overlooked places where dancing happens . . . Why do we dance together? What does dancing tells us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, '80s club nights, Irish dancehalls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. Dancing doesn't just refract the music and culture within which it evolves; it also generates new music and culture. When we speak only of the music, we lose part of the story - the part that finds us dancing as children on the toes of adults; the half that triggers communication across borders and languages; the part that finds us worried that we'll never be able to dance again, and the part that finds us wondering why we were ever nervous in the first place. At the intersection of memoir, social and cultural history, Dance Your Way Home is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor - wherever and whenever it may be - that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move.

Emma Warren has been documenting grassroots music culture for decades. She is the author of Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre (2019), which was a MOJO book of the year and was re-released by Chicago record label International Anthem; her pamphlet Steam Down: Or How Things Begin (2019), which was published by Rough Trade Books and was named an Irish Times read of the year; and Document Your Culture: A Manual (2020). Warren was a founding contributor to Jockey Slut magazine, worked on staff at The Face and worked as the editorial mentor at youth-run Brixton publication Live Magazine. Her monthly radio show on Worldwide FM ran for six years.