Dorothy’s No Name Social Prom & Nostalgia Fest

Saturday, April 25, 1987
The Concert Hall

“[DJing is] very much like a roller coaster ride where you try to keep them up in the air as much as possible. You may do a few dips, but you never bring them down too much because oftentimes, it’s much harder to bring them back to the floor.”

- Ron Merko, GCDC DJ

“Your purpose as a DJ is to keep most folks partying…This wasn’t a venue to teach people brand new music, so we kept it familiar. After last call, the folks on the dance floor were either wasted on booze or tripping on drugs, so often it was a lot of fun.”

- Bob Harrison Drue, GCDC DJ

While DJs upstairs would be separated from dancers on a raised stage above the dance floor, DJs downstairs were more integrated into the space and on the same level as the dancers. Deb Parent remembers regularly leaving the DJ booth so that she could dance with the women on the dance floor: “I’m always dancing. Sometimes I’m dancing behind the console and sometimes I’m dancing on the floor with women, you know if the song is long enough for me to get out there and get back again or I know exactly what I’m going to do next and get it lined up. They have to feel my energy and I have to feel theirs and when we do, that chemistry is awesome.” Parent explains that the lack of separation between dancers and DJS made the basement feel like a communal space. This sense of community  was also bolstered by Parent’s music request book. Parent would periodically insert requested music into her broader set to ensure that the dancers  felt like they had agency in co-creating the musical journey on the dance floor.

For Parent, the dance floor experience offered a way to shed the gendered expectations that women faced elsewhere in patriarchal society. This collective potential informs how she approached her work as a DJ. “It’s a moment in time,” she explains, “where we are safe and free, particularly as women, where–imagine if this was our life, if we could live all of our lives from this place without having to think through the danger or the consequences, without being told what we can or can’t do, how we should or shouldn’t dress, who we should or shouldn’t love, all of that. I think good DJs have to have that ability to create an energy and an opportunity for abandonment.”

“What we’re trying to do as DJs is to build energy so that you get women onto the dance floor, have women yelling out the words to a song, or clapping to it. There’s a few songs that you know are going to get people rushing out onto the dance floor. The idea is to keep them there, build that energy, allow them to sweat, and just be in their bodies. There’s a sensuality and a sexuality that happens on the dance floor. Some women find it easier to express more than others, but there’s no judgement when everyone’s having a good time on the dance floor. Women are dancing by themselves, they’re dancing with strangers, watching groups of women form and then un-form, and then come together in a new shape. It’s powerful as a DJ. And yet I don’t feel like I’m separate from it. I feel like this is co-created, that we are in this together.”

- Deb Parent, GCDC DJ