Idiot dancing: expressiveness, headbanging, and the trance experience

Abstract

Idiot dancing is a British term. It was mostly used between the late 1960s and the mid-to-late 1970s. It referred to an extreme form of what I am calling here expressive dancing. Expressive dancing refers to dancing that is lacking, or almost lacking, in any choreography. Rather, expressive dancing is dancing where the dancer responds to the beat, other embellishments from the drummer and possibly to riffs and runs from the guitarist, bass player, or other instrument. Expressive dancing evolved in Britain from the late 1940s and became normalised around the mid-to-late 1960s. Because it lacks choreography, expressive dancing can easily lead to a loss of rationality. Since rationality has been a keystone of modernity, dancing that can lead to irrationality has been frowned upon and criticised. Such dancing has often involved the use of drugs ranging from alcohol through stimulants like amphetamines to MDMA, ecstasy, and the use of the rave generation. One important version of expressive dancing has been that performed to heavy metal music, headbanging. Like expressive dancing more generally, headbanging can lead to a state of trance. Trance needs to be distinguished from ecstasy, a term that has become confusingly deeply associated with the rave culture of the 1990s. Trance in many cultures involves dancing. Some Sufi mystics utilise a similar movement to headbanging. The Dionysian rites of Ancient Greece involved both dancing and the use of alcohol, in that case wine. All this provides a context for understanding idiot dancing.