The dance club bringing people together across cultural boundaries
Welcome to the sell-out smash hit that is Edinburgh's Brown Gals Dance Club
When I was younger, largely untouched by the boundaries of religion and culture, I wanted to be a dervish. Maybe beneath the mask of everyday living, I still want to be one. To be a swirling silhouette against the backdrop of a God that is attainable, writes Himani Tripathi.
Lately I have been wondering what it means to aspire. A good job, a happy relationship, some money in the bank. Here I am still, sulky as the day I was born, looking for meaning in life. Life, to me, is serious business. The only thing that cuts through this never-ending task of living is to dance.
Bogomir Doringer, the Serbian researcher and curator, writes about ‘the dances of collective crises.’ Something he witnessed when rave club culture helped him and others with the emotional coping in Belgrade during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The first time I read that phrase, it clicked into place.
This is why the idea of starting Brown Gals Dance Club (BGDC) four years ago had come to me. I started a dance club as a business enterprise, just so I could permit myself to dance. No grace and no shame.
Carving our a corner
Doringer writes, ‘You need to move to resolve something, such as fear, insecurity, restlessness, possible death, and often you also move to find others like yourself.’ I have carved out a corner where my friends and I can dance.
We’re walking down Leith Walk and the sun has braided itself through the red of Lana’s hair. We’re screaming our goodbyes at each other – her, unbothered and full of joy and me, hyperaware of the looks we are getting from those around us. I make my way home and catch snippets of conversations from people sitting outside cafes and bars. I think back to Lana’s face and this way that she has about her, all Arab charm and British wit. A finely blended tea. So fierce and free and beautiful for it. She makes it look effortless. She grew up between Lebanon, Nigeria and England, dancing to Nancy Ajram in her living room. I was in India at the time, where I grew up also dancing in my living room, albeit to very different music.
To be an immigrant is to search for a home that always evades you, and yet, the sky in Leith has been home to me as no other roof. I walk down the street and meet at least seven and a half people whom I know. I love the scent and the sound and the gritty living of it all. It feels real in a way that few things are anymore.
Reclaiming an identity
When Azia, Lana and I started BGDC we had a desire to share our culture with each other – and with the people that we love around us. Azia and I met while working, I was working part-time as a barista to support my studies at the University of Edinburgh. We met Lana later – she was one of the people we photographed for our first exhibition. She has quickly become the driving force behind our work.
There is similarity in our cultures and vast oceans of difference, but for our club nights we tend to focus on the former. We cannot conclusively answer the question, ‘What does it mean to be brown?’. Race is a construct after all. But this perception, the knowledge that an external gaze sees us all the same way can be a disconcerting thing. For us, BGDC is a way of reclaiming an identity that is imposed upon us, rather than something that occurs to us naturally.
Azia, who is a born and raised Londoner, is a talented photographer. Her mixed heritage includes Fijian Indian culture. Her grandmother’s story of living as a part of the Indian diaspora in Fiji, and later in New Zealand has helped expand my own understanding of how fluid national identities really are, and what it means to belong to a place.
We began four years ago now, from my birthday party. I was looking for a rhythm and could only find it in the familiar beats of a home I have left behind. I am lucky to have friends who are obstinately and feverishly against the idea of outsourcing their living to anything. The dirty, back-breaking labour of thought and action is ours to carry and carry it we do. A hard day’s work and our reward is each other’s smiles and attention. I think this makes us good dancers, because at the end of each day when the mask slips, we are all slammed back into bodies that want to move. Are we dancing to remember or dancing to forget? I’m not sure.
Dancing can be an escape from the mind, but it cannot be an escape from the self. To dance well, you must be intimately aware of your body. To be able to isolate and concentrate on the muscles in your waist or your calves for example, and then to imbue them with intuitive movement.
A beautiful feeling
We hosted our first event in March 2023 at Agitate Gallery in Haymarket. It was a photo exhibition and a club night. Everyone was welcome – we simply wanted to share our love and music with people around us. We sold out that first event and have sold out every event since. We hosted our fourth club night at Jamaica Yard (in the New Town) this April. We have been lucky to be able to share this night with people who understand our motives and the intention behind the space we have created. It is a beautiful feeling, to have people from all cultural and racial backgrounds appreciate this atmosphere of joy and abandon. I’ve heard some beautiful and reflective conversations about identity spark alongside the cigarettes in the smoking areas.
We never meant this to be about representation – a term that has been hollowed out and co-opted by corporate entities in the worst of ways. We simply noticed that our cultures had taught us how to loosen our inhibitions, to find and meet ourselves again through music and movement, and we wanted to create an environment for people to be able to do that without judgement, as a partial panacea for the maladies of modern living. I think we have succeeded.
We are dancing our way through our collective crises, both internal and external, and we would like to invite you to join us. Our next event will be in the winter months this year. The best way to keep in touch with us is to follow us on Instagram.