MY FRIENDS and I were on an out-of-town trip one Friday morning when the car radio played “Shake Body Dancer,” a popular dance song from the 80s. As if on cue, we sang along and the lyrics just kept on flashing back despite not having heard of the song in ages. While singing the song, we found ourselves doing the same dance steps on our seats. Even by just listening to the song and even without a choreographer showing us what to do, we were in sync performing the iconic Maricel Soriano moves that made the dance craze a staple number in almost all television shows back in the days.
Suffice it to say that after the song, we found ourselves travelling down memory lane, comparing how even the lyrics of the dance songs during our time had a story to tell, and how each song was associated with a particular dance move.
This conversation prompted our driver to share how he misses the days when the youth club of one barangay would organize a dance party during the summer, invite friends and guests from the other barrios and made sure everyone had a good time on the makeshift dance floor.
Of course, we all had a story to tell how we enjoyed that particular chapter in our lives. To begin with, we could not afford to spend the weekends going to Manila to enjoy the dance scene in the popular dance joints such as Faces, Rumors, Mars, or Euphoria to name a few. Neither could we go regularly to Phase 4 and Odeum in Angeles City or the Disco World in San Fernando. The only practical thing to do was to go to all these barrio dance parties as invited guests, or you buy the ticket at the entrance, knowing that the organizers would do the same when it is your group’s turn to hold the dance party in your barangay.
Well, the dance area is not one “shining, shimmering, splendid” dance floor. You’re lucky if you have a concrete basketball court in your barangay. Otherwise, you and the other organizers would work very hard for days, making sure that the piece of land that was once planted with rice or other crops, would be flattened so you can turn it into a decent dance “floor.” There were no iron fences or steel barricades to enclose the dance area, only coconut fronds tied on bamboo poles surrounding the venue. In the absence of event stylists during those days, the organizers would make flowers and buntings from crepe paper, cartolinas, and other available materials to spruce up the place. The venue was nowhere near glamorous, but the young partygoers made sure they were dressed to the nines. The color palette of the 80s fashion, the shoulder pads, the heavily-gelled men’s long-back hairstyle and of course, the Aquanet finishing touch for the women’s hairstyle – these were more than enough to make up for the venue’s mediocre decorations in today’s standards. But the partygoers did not mind at all – they all went to enjoy the music and dance the night away, not to marvel at the decors.
The friendliest and most popular members were kept away from the main entrance as they find it very difficult to say no to friends who wanted free entry. The strictest and the ones with the least number of friends were usually in charge of making sure each partygoer had paid the entrance fee, and that all major sponsors and donors were welcomed properly and ushered to their reserved seats.
The energy on the dance floor was one for the books. Everyone knew the songs and performed the dance steps with so much gusto. The spacious dance floor became one giant stage straight from the GMA Supershow or That’s Entertainment as everyone was practically doing the same dance steps for each particular song, whether it was ‘Rico Mambo’, ‘Just Got Lucky,’ ‘Footloose’ and many more dance hits.
And when the DJ played a love song with the special announcement that it was an exclusive song for the officers, everyone else stepped aside and went back to their seats as if to honor an unwritten law among the youth. The male officers would then approach their female guests, their significant others or prospective girlfriends, took them to the dance floor for a “sweet dance” amidst loud cheers from the crowd as if giving them their approval of the budding romance.
During those times, these dance parties were simply events that gave everyone a summer or night to remember – gadgaran pusad, terakan keng marangle, terakan gagabun. But looking back now, they were actually our baptism of fire in honing our organizational skills. We learned how to tap and meet possible donors and convince them to support our simple cause, delegate various tasks among our members and lead them throughout the activity, and encourage, motivate and even appreciate people who work just as hard in order to achieve the organization’s goals. The dance parties of the 80s undoubtedly bring back wonderful memories from our youth; they also remind us how to find real joy and happiness even in the simplest of things.
