Northern Soul Dance Style Origins

[Ageing Face]

Does anyone know how the generic northern soul dance style originated?
I got in to Northern around 1976 and by that time it was already established that dancers seemed to have there own 6ft square of dance floor, which they two-stepped & walked around in time to the music.

I thought may have come from the Mod clubs where some of the music came from, but the Missus was a Mod in the 60’s and apart from dancing to Willie Tee’s “Walking Up A One-Way Street” she can’t remember any dances with a walking style in the Mod clubs up North.

I’d like to know if it’s a “Northern” thing from clubs like Va Va in Bolton or did what we recognise as Northern Soul dancing originate in the Midlands at the Golden Torch or the Catacombs

Any information would be appreciated 

[Frankie Crocker]

An interesting question, and one that's been covered in earlier threads. Essentially, early Northern dancers emulated 60’s soul artists’ dance styles seen in USA music shows featuring the footwork of Major Lance, Jackie Wilson, James Brown and others. When Wigan opened in 1973, the dance style was predominantly shuffling side to side with much rapid footwork. As the scene moved on, it attracted masses of attendees not aware of the Wheel-Torch dance style so the late 70’s witnessed the arrival of the ‘lazy two-step style’ popular in discos. Packed dance floors to some extent forced this ‘dancing-on-the-spot’ approach as there was no space to move side to side. The late 70’s saw the emergence of a modern dance style that later came to be called ‘shuffling’ - the faster sounds of the contemporary newies encouraged dancers to move backwards and forwards. Today’s events usually display a variety of dance styles with older attendees favouring the lazy-two-step, youngsters wearing trainers doing the ‘modern shuffling’, veterans embracing the Wheel-Torch old-style shuffle and plenty of free-style-dance-how-you-wanna punters generally doing their own thing.

[Merve]

Does anyone remember the kind of skipping dance that is usually attributed to The Flasher but was also prevalent when records like  I Like To Party - Alpaca Phase III, Roberta Kelly - Troublemaker, Al Foster - Night of The Wolf, 8th Avenue Band - The Whole Thing etc were played ?...It came & disappeared in the space of around of 6 months never to be seen again?

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Merve
I've had a light ale or two & repeated myself !

[Seano]

I think it was 1975 when I got into Northern via the Winter Gardens in Banbury. People who were already travelling to places like Wigan and previously the Torch and Wheel were bringing it all back to little towns like ours.

They managed to persuade the Saturday night DJs to play a few records of choice now and then, and would all dance in an area together in a way that you were either amazed by or reacted aggressively to. For me, obviously amazed; but you did get the other side of people being twats with things like flicking cigarette stubs where people were dancing, splashing drink, or just walking around to make it difficult to dance.

A fair few of us were drawn to the music and style that these people highlighted, and began to try and emulate the dance styles and find out more. All very much like the Youth Club scene in the film, Northern Soul.

At the time, as a late teenager, I thought it was all completely new; new music, new styles of dancing, fashions, everything. I was surprised as time passed to see that pretty much all of it was drawing on the past in so many ways.

But in terms of the dancing and a generic style.... Back in the mid 70s I spent a year or two trying to perfect what I thought was the style of the day (and my knees are paying the price today!). But I think that like most people in that period, I transitioned fairly quickly to feeling that the variations in how people were dancing was a good thing, and began to be a bit freer with how I danced too. I'm sure that to anyone outside I'd have just looked like anyone else on the dance floor, but within the scene I think we all began to find subtle ways of dancing in an individual style.

The walking and stepping style needs a little unpicking I think. There was an element of facing in one direction and shuffling side to side, but then (and now) there has always been a style of the shuffle moving round, sometimes in a steady circular change, at others moving partly in one clockwise direction but then, sometimes unexpectedly, switching to the opposite.

Obviously with all styles of upright dance, there was always the spin, the classic backdrop, and athletic extras. I never mastered the spin ( though I tried!), I did manage backdrops back in the day, and even up to the early 2000s I could kick up in the air and drop down to a sort of kneel.

But the walk and shuffle is the key I suppose. It was fundamental to the dancing of the mid-70s, and maybe earlier, and right through to now, it remains the core of how we all respond to our music and allows us to enjoy a much wider range of tempos with regard to dancing as individuals. We don't have to be blasting at full speed, nor do we have to feel we need to ask a partner to slow dance, we can just go with the feel of the track.

One aspect of the 'area' based style of Northern Soul dancing that has always pleased me, is the positive social aspect of not only trying to avoid physically clashing with other dancers on the floor, but taking care to tweak how you're moving to avoid crashing into each other. Also the social niceties of acknowledging a person if you do end up bumping into them and sort of singing and mouthing "sorry". What other music scene has that built in?

[Ageing Face]

8 hours ago, Frankie Crocker said:

An interesting question, and one that's been covered in earlier threads. Essentially, early Northern dancers emulated 60’s soul artists’ dance styles seen in USA music shows featuring the footwork of Major Lance, Jackie Wilson, James Brown and others. When Wigan opened in 1973, the dance style was predominantly shuffling side to side with much rapid footwork. As the scene moved on, it attracted masses of attendees not aware of the Wheel-Torch dance style so the late 70’s witnessed the arrival of the ‘lazy two-step style’ popular in discos. Packed dance floors to some extent forced this ‘dancing-on-the-spot’ approach as there was no space to move side to side. The late 70’s saw the emergence of a modern dance style that later came to be called ‘shuffling’ - the faster sounds of the contemporary newies encouraged dancers to move backwards and forwards. Today’s events usually display a variety of dance styles with older attendees favouring the lazy-two-step, youngsters wearing trainers doing the ‘modern shuffling’, veterans embracing the Wheel-Torch old-style shuffle and plenty of free-style-dance-how-you-wanna punters generally doing their own thing.

That tallies with what the Missus said, particularly at the King Mojo in Sheffield, she said that when Peter Stringfellow had acts from the US guys would emulate their moves

[Ageing Face]

6 hours ago, Seano said:

I think it was 1975 when I got into Northern via the Winter Gardens in Banbury. People who were already travelling to places like Wigan and previously the Torch and Wheel were bringing it all back to little towns like ours.

They managed to persuade the Saturday night DJs to play a few records of choice now and then, and would all dance in an area together in a way that you were either amazed by or reacted aggressively to. For me, obviously amazed; but you did get the other side of people being twats with things like flicking cigarette stubs where people were dancing, splashing drink, or just walking around to make it difficult to dance.

A fair few of us were drawn to the music and style that these people highlighted, and began to try and emulate the dance styles and find out more. All very much like the Youth Club scene in the film, Northern Soul.

At the time, as a late teenager, I thought it was all completely new; new music, new styles of dancing, fashions, everything. I was surprised as time passed to see that pretty much all of it was drawing on the past in so many ways.

But in terms of the dancing and a generic style.... Back in the mid 70s I spent a year or two trying to perfect what I thought was the style of the day (and my knees are paying the price today!). But I think that like most people in that period, I transitioned fairly quickly to feeling that the variations in how people were dancing was a good thing, and began to be a bit freer with how I danced too. I'm sure that to anyone outside I'd have just looked like anyone else on the dance floor, but within the scene I think we all began to find subtle ways of dancing in an individual style.

The walking and stepping style needs a little unpicking I think. There was an element of facing in one direction and shuffling side to side, but then (and now) there has always been a style of the shuffle moving round, sometimes in a steady circular change, at others moving partly in one clockwise direction but then, sometimes unexpectedly, switching to the opposite.

Obviously with all styles of upright dance, there was always the spin, the classic backdrop, and athletic extras. I never mastered the spin ( though I tried!), I did manage backdrops back in the day, and even up to the early 2000s I could kick up in the air and drop down to a sort of kneel.

But the walk and shuffle is the key I suppose. It was fundamental to the dancing of the mid-70s, and maybe earlier, and right through to now, it remains the core of how we all respond to our music and allows us to enjoy a much wider range of tempos with regard to dancing as individuals. We don't have to be blasting at full speed, nor do we have to feel we need to ask a partner to slow dance, we can just go with the feel of the track.

One aspect of the 'area' based style of Northern Soul dancing that has always pleased me, is the positive social aspect of not only trying to avoid physically clashing with other dancers on the floor, but taking care to tweak how you're moving to avoid crashing into each other. Also the social niceties of acknowledging a person if you do end up bumping into them and sort of singing and mouthing "sorry". What other music scene has that built in?

The etiquette shows what a polite group we Soulies are. I think that’s why people that have been around the scene get so annoyed by idiots at venues

[Our Kid]

9 hours ago, Merve said:

Does anyone remember the kind of skipping dance that is usually attributed to The Flasher but was also prevalent when records like  I Like To Party - Alpaca Phase III, Roberta Kelly - Troublemaker, Al Foster - Night of The Wolf, 8th Avenue Band - The Whole Thing etc were played ?...It came & disappeared in the space of around of 6 months never to be seen again?

 

 

[Our Kid]

Just now, Our Kid said:

 

I seem to recall that short phase being christened 'lollopping'. Looked too enegetic to remain around for too long.

 

Paul

[Petesi]

11 hours ago, Frankie Crocker said:

An interesting question, and one that's been covered in earlier threads. Essentially, early Northern dancers emulated 60’s soul artists’ dance styles seen in USA music shows featuring the footwork of Major Lance, Jackie Wilson, James Brown and others. When Wigan opened in 1973, the dance style was predominantly shuffling side to side with much rapid footwork. As the scene moved on, it attracted masses of attendees not aware of the Wheel-Torch dance style so the late 70’s witnessed the arrival of the ‘lazy two-step style’ popular in discos. Packed dance floors to some extent forced this ‘dancing-on-the-spot’ approach as there was no space to move side to side. The late 70’s saw the emergence of a modern dance style that later came to be called ‘shuffling’ - the faster sounds of the contemporary newies encouraged dancers to move backwards and forwards. Today’s events usually display a variety of dance styles with older attendees favouring the lazy-two-step, youngsters wearing trainers doing the ‘modern shuffling’, veterans embracing the Wheel-Torch old-style shuffle and plenty of free-style-dance-how-you-wanna punters generally doing their own thing.

This post is (as far as I remember) fairly close to the answer as you can get, also it will very much depend on your location of the events you went to as things back then didn`t move region to region as quick as the do today.

My recollection is that by the time I started dancing 1971/72 the dancers all used variations of the stuff seen on TV shows from the American sixties soul train shows etc mainly a side to side shuffle or what I call the Motown shuffle. Then late 72-75 with the growth of Wigan etc  evolved the semi-circle type faster step around dance we did to records like Jimmy Raye "Philly dog around the World" , Oh and by the way you step BEHIND your front leading leg NOT over it teddy boy style as quite a few seem to do today, just a point. Come 1974/75/76 Colin Curtis and others pioneered some of the more funkier sounding stuff and and the on the the spot backwards /forwards step shuffle dance evolved. I along with some of the older Torch crew sat open mouthed  at the Tiffany`s All dayers in Newcastle under Lyme watching and thinking WTF? as records like Open Sessame , dance a la music etc which bought out a whole new tribe of younger funky strutters. It is just my own opinion but, there were  basically three styles of dance for the original Northern scene and each was used (dependant on your ability) to match  the type of record being played. Admittedly some of the dance stuff you see today bares little resemblance to the original stuff, I blame "Riverdance" for that LoL but, if your happy doing it good luck, enjoy yourself, as for me I just stick to the "old style / old ways".

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Our Kid said:

I seem to recall that short phase being christened 'lollopping'. Looked too enegetic to remain around for too long.

 

Paul

Wasn't lolloping just a bit earlier?  a mecca/ritz thing, likes of dr buzzard etc

The flasher dance thing was a bit later yep? Mistura at first then likes of Alfie Khan, plus ya could also clock it later being done at mainstream night clubs round our way to likes of Archie Bells Soul City Walk 

At first 'flasher' was more an east coast thing yep? 'on trend' for a few weeks as they say nowadays there, then can remember a mucker saying it's been dropped in most of those places, once people found out Wigan had picked it up

 

[Julianb]

Rumour has it, I was a decent dancer back in the day. Now 2 or 3 'shuffles' is about my limit.☹

[Ageing Face]

15 minutes ago, Julianb said:

Rumour has it, I was a decent dancer back in the day. Now 2 or 3 'shuffles' is about my limit.☹

I know just what you mean