Classy-fied

Saturday, February 24, 1990
The Concert Hall

“There were not very many bars where you could dance and be comfortable by yourself. GCDC dances were great for shy people–there were places where you could dance and not feel pointed out. As soon as music played that you really liked, you’d jump up and dance. You didn’t have to worry about anyone laughing at you. You would dance your way to somebody that was really cute. I loved dancing there!”

- Alan Miller, GCDC Volunteer

Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, GCDC dances offered Toronto’s queer community a palpable sense of togetherness and belonging. This sense of togetherness facilitated by collective movement is one reason that dancing has been so fundamental to the organising of marginalised groups, including the LGBTQ2+ community. On the dance floor, dancers, musicians, and DJs participate in an interactive relationship–working together to create the musical and social environment of the dance floor. 

“I loved that about the GCDC dances, you could go alone and you could have an amazing time because people weren’t asking you, ‘Hey, you want to dance?’ They were just like, ‘Hey, we’re dancing!’–suddenly you’re surrounded. They were all just having a good time.”

- Philip Share, GCDC Organiser

Since the 1960s, popular dance music has moved away from musical traditions of linearity and narrative progress (musical elements expressed largely through pitch and melody) to instead privilege rhythm, repetition, and groove. Music based on repetition and circularity–for example, disco–enables forms of participation that call dancers’ attention to presentness and being in the moment. On the dance floor there is a collective joy in repetition that can engender a sense of queer collectivity.

“GCDC dances left a positive feeling, because it is an uplifting experience when you have that many people dancing and the music pumping away. Many people went because they enjoyed it being a large community event. There were some people that went to the dances but didn’t go to the bars.”

- Ron Merko, GCDC DJ and Organiser

The act of participating in queer musical practices, spaces, and communities can solidify a sense of individual and collective belonging and agency as well as a desire for a more just world. However, historical LGBTQ2+ dance floors, like contemporary dance floors, were not free from hierarchies and discrimination. Like most dance floors of the 1980s, GCDC’s dance floor  almost exclusively featured music performed by Black and Latinx artists; however, the dance floor collective itself was overwhelmingly white. The dances were also predominantly male–with the main upstairs dance floor a predominantly male space–and dances were not always wheelchair accessible. While not exempt from perpetuating such exclusions along the lines of race, gender, class, and ability, the GCDC dance floors were spaces in which diverse LGBTQ2+ communities convened, built, and sustained coalitions, forging meaningful connections through participation in dance music.