From the transcript of an improvised lightning talk at the Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography:

In 2018 I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago, took a job with less responsibilities than I had before, triggered the beginning of the end of my marriage, quit workohol cold-turkey, and started rethinking my creative processes.

I started going to dance clubs. Methodically, area by area, I would research venues, spend the night dancing, and write down all the details, both factual and ineffable, in a diary. I did this every 2-3 weekends, writing my notes on the bus to the venue and enjoying late night conversation with random rideshare drivers on the way back.

The core concept of my project was rediscovering dancing in urban venues as a hidden link to a primordial body language that is normally repressed during normal civil interaction.

After about a year I was ready to take the project to the next step. I drafted a Craigslist announcement looking for dance club partners to “tear the dance floor to shreds”. As I was ready to post the ad, I realized COVID-19 had gotten out of control.

You can’t have this kind of dance event with the virus. These are now times for reflection and planning. And, after much reflection and planning, and after attending the first day of 4WCOP, I knew what to do.

The pandemic will eventually go away. When the clubs reopen, there shall be a worldwide distributed dance company ready to reclaim those spaces from social drinking and conversation; to strip them bare; to convert them into theaters of joyous, creative Chaos.

Such company shall be made up of people with or without dancing experience; in either case, they shall leave their skills behind. The more they dance like idiots, the better. The company shall take over the sacred space of the dance floor not in a brutal or provocative way, but by transporting regular citizens who came there for a regular chat and a drink into a whirlwind that lasts a couple of hours and won’t be televised.

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