Middle-school dances are havens for young teens to hang out, test independence
High-pitched shrieks pierce the Valentine's Day dance darkness as DJ Robert O'Shaughnessy tells giddy students to pair off; it's a slow beat, so before too many kids slink away, he issues another command: "Freeze!" he says. "Two steps left! Turn and face me! Here's your new dance!"
More screams, this time in favor of the "Cha-Cha Slide," a ubiquitous line-dance favorite sampling George Benson's "On Broadway." Gangly legs step in unison, 150 kids bouncing and shouting as one, and when the call comes — "everybody clap your hands" — the result sounds like a giant adding machine.
If the kids seem a little excited, cut them some slack: Middle-school and junior-high students are negotiating possibly the greatest stage of human development after infancy. Just like 2-year-olds, they can be defiant and self-centered, prone to mood swings, temper tantrums and limited attention spans. What better place to deal with all of that — even if it's subconsciously — than here?
For administrators, dances are another way to connect students with school; for parents, it's safer than letting kids run around town. For kids, though, school dances are way more than that: They're rest stops en route to growing up and away from parents; they're hotbeds of imminent sexuality, boundary-pushing proving grounds (with supervision). And they're a place to make memories.
At Denny Middle School, eighth-grader Rosa Antunez motions to a pair of sixth-grade classmates. "It's the last time we're going to see the little ones," she says, adopting a motherly tone.
Schools typically hold several dances a year, but whether it's middle school (sixth-eighth grade) or junior high (seventh-ninth), you can see first-year students gaining composure with each one. For those in their final year, dances are a stage to flaunt their prominence as near-high-schoolers.
At the Northwood dance, tiny girls with too much makeup spill off the dance floor into bright hallways, fanning themselves with their palms. All these parents! There's two of them, across the way, minding rows of accessories — jackets, duffel bags, backpacks, purses — piled nearby in molehill-sized mounds. "Coat check," one parent explains.
OK. As long as they keep their distance. Says Sandie Swartout, another parent working the refreshment table at the 7:30 p.m. dance: "I don't want my daughter to be embarrassed, so I just stay back here and let her have her time. But I still want to be part of it."
Back in the cafeteria, school administrators watch for no-no activity from a platform overlooking the action. The occasional infraction slides by — a mini mosh pit that finally draws chaperone intervention; then later, during a slow song, a boy coolly chewing gum with his hands resting on his partner's J.Los.
But enforcers see little, if any, of the "freak-dancing" — think animals in heat and a heavy bass beat — that mostly haunts high schools from coast to coast.
"Let me tell you what," says DJ Johnny Gargano, who runs Shoreline-based Viva Productions. "I didn't even get into the school-dance business until four years ago, and when I went out and DJ'd a school dance for the first time, I couldn't believe it. I said to myself, 'It'd cost you 200 bucks to get this kind of action in Vegas.' I wouldn't want my daughter doing it."
Schools, then, draw lines. Northwood spells out the rules early on: No obscenity. No running. No slam dancing. No making out; no hands in inappropriate places.
And no freak dancing.
As strict as it might all sound, parents often draw tighter lines than adolescent-savvy staff, which is one reason kids prefer student-run dances over those led by parent-teacher associations. "The more parents who are around, the more they come and separate you because you're dancing too close," says Northwood ninth-grader Molly Hoffman.
Says classmate Cantlon Ryan: "Molly's a freak."
"I am not," says Molly.
"We see these kids every day," says Northwood student-activities adviser Kathi Reichert. "We know what they're like. We have rules, and we're not going to cross the line, but we're used to seeing what they do. A lot of times, parents haven't seen them interact or some of the ways kids dress, and they're sometimes taken aback."
It's "freaking," the provocative phenomenon actually banned by high schools from Palo Alto, Calif., to Columbia, Md., that takes them aback the most. TuesD Chambers, activities adviser at Seattle's McClure Middle School, calls it "sandwich dancing." "It sounds nicer," she says.
If the bumping and grinding goes too far, administrators give fair warning. "They'll kick you out," Denny's Rosa Antunez says. "They give you two warnings, and then they put you to the curb."
DJs shouldn't be responsible for policing the dance floor, says Viva Productions' Gargano, but a good DJ also won't overplay songs that encourage freak-dancing. "You need to mix it up," he says. "Otherwise they'll freak-dance to every song you play."
DJ O'Shaughnessy, of Sound Factory, agrees. "This is no worse than what happened when Elvis came out, when it was like, 'Oh my God, he shook his pelvis!' For a lot of people, (freak-dancing) is seen as a prelude to sex, but to kids, it's just dancing."
And reputations are at stake in the heightened peer consciousness of middle school. "In seventh grade, you're nervous because you don't know who's watching you," Molly Hoffman says. "You don't want to get a bad name."
In ninth grade now, she doesn't care about that anymore; it bugs her when everybody just stands around. What are you waiting for, an invitation?
Says Denny's Nancy Tran, who's danced with the same circle of friends since sixth grade: "It's not like, 'Ask me!' You just grab them and start dancing."
Not everyone can go. At Seattle's McClure Middle School, kids with failing grades can't buy tickets. "If we're going to be committed to them passing, why are we gonna let them go boogie down?" adviser Chambers says.
Finding a DJ isn't hard; the trick is finding one who makes the grade. Chambers says one McClure parent was predictably upset after one former DJ played everything under the sun. "You don't want your kids to be hearing, you know, 'Put it in here, do that and do this,' " Chambers says.
In this environment, the DJ is mixmaster and commander, mood maker, social engineer. Some kids are ready to bust a move; it's easy to get 'em groovin' if you know what they want to hear. Others aren't ready just yet. Maybe it's their first dance. Maybe the lights aren't dim enough. Maybe the thought of actual contact with someone else is just too ... icky.
"Some people still think girls have cooties," O'Shaughnessy says.
At Viva Productions, former Vegas lounge musician Gargano says working school dances is like walking a tightrope: Please the kids; don't upset the adults. "It's a challenge," he says. "Not every DJ can go out and pull it off."
Even if they do requests, DJs usually ask for desired song lists ahead of time to make sure they've got them available and well edited. In addition to everything on local Top 40 lists, they stock inexplicably popular old-school stalwarts like the Village People's "YMCA."
Formats are tailored to fit urban or suburban tastes; inside city limits it's R&B and hip-hop; outside, more Linkin Park and Blink 182. "We do a school out in Neah Bay, and if I do anything other than rap, I'm gonna get killed," O'Shaughnessy says.
The key, he says, is to mix it up. Don't play songs twice. Too much of one thing and next thing you know, half the kids are off to the activity room and the school is out for your head. It's a delicate balance.
You can count on sixth-grade boys to flank the perimeter, mystified by the whole experience, but for Denny eighth-grader Malena Jones, the dance floor is a place to shake off that confining, middle-school cocoon. "It's total socialize time," she says. "It's like you're a different person. I talk to people I never talked to before."
For two hours, at least, it's a place to shelve insecurity and self-consciousness, to take in the last breaths of adolescent innocence. "What you can really do," says Northwood's Melissa Sanborn, a 12-year-old seventh-grader, "is hang out with your friends, without a care in the world."
Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com