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Well hello sexy listeners. I’m ThatPodcastGirl C Dub, and This Is A Podcast About House Music.

I want to start by saying hello to the new listeners I’m seeing pop up in Australia, Germany, the UK, Israel, and Brazil. I see some of you listening on your TVs, streaming through Chromecast, sitting back and letting the sound fill the room. I love that. I’m really glad you’re here.

All season long, we’ve talked about rooms.

Chicago basements. New York lofts. UK warehouses.

We’ve talked about sound systems, about pacing, about what happened when clubs got bigger and nights got longer and house music had to stretch without losing itself.

For this episode, I want to talk about the people and how they moved to this music.

Because if you really want to understand a culture, you don’t just listen to the music. You do have to watch what it does to bodies over time.

House music dancing had a very particular feel to it. It had a posture. A way of settling into the body that showed up again and again, even though nobody was teaching it. It didn’t come from choreography or instruction. It came from the conditions of the music itself. There were long blends. Steady tempos. Heat. Sweat. And a lot of time.

If you weren’t around it, the dancing could look subtle, even understated. But once you recognize it, you start seeing it everywhere.

In Chicago for example, so much of the movement lived in the torso. The word jack shows up constantly in early house culture. In record titles and in lyrics. In the way people talked about the music. Jackin’ described a rolling motion through the chest, ribs, and spine. A forward and back wave that never really stopped. The beat didn’t hit the body from the outside. It moved through the center and outward.

People didn’t rush it. They let the motion repeat until it settled. Knees stayed bent. Weight dropped low into the hips. Nothing looked sharp or forced. Dancers talked about getting locked in, catching the groove, finding the pocket. Those weren’t metaphors. They were describing what it felt like when the body finally lined up with the track.

That made sense because Chicago house gave you time. Records stayed in place long enough for the body to relax into them. The dancing conserved energy and it was sustainable. You could stay there for hours.

When you move to New York, the quality shifts. The dancing becomes more contained, more internal. A lot of people later used the word lofting to describe it, connected to the culture of David Mancuso’s Loft and other noncommercial spaces where dancing wasn’t about being seen.

Movement stayed compact. Arms followed the body instead of leading it. Steps stayed close to the floor. People danced inches from each other without needing interaction. You could be surrounded by hundreds of people and still feel like everyone was having a private experience.

A lot of dancers from that era remember how quiet those floors could feel, even when they were full. Not quiet in sound, but quiet in energy. It wasn’t about big gestures or screaming. The movement stayed focused and inward.

Across all of these rooms, the feet carried the most information.

House footwork was quick and responsive, but not flashy. Steps skimmed the floor. Heels and toes worked independently. Weight shifted constantly through small pivots, slides, and turns. Dancers responded to details in the music. Hi-hats and shuffled percussion.

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