"The College Experience"
Written by Jose Diaz
September 4, 2001 

I remember it as if it were yesterday. My first ever college party and it took place at NYU. Located at a dorm in Midtown Manhattan, I climbed the steps and entered the room. Bodies swaying and dancing everywhere, this is one of the liveliest crowds I had ever had the pleasure to be around. The music was blasting and I was a witness to one of the biggest mixtures of dance styles I had ever seen. Someone set up a strobe light in the middle of the room too which made things even more interesting. I had that visual confusion that strobe light creates, people moving slower than they really should be while I'm moving at what I perceive to be an average speed.

The people attending this party obviously came from different parts of the world. The genre was alternative, however the dancing was anything but. I saw people doing all dances from the carribean, the orient and even some weird new dances that aren't quite associated with any culture. One guy in particular was really weird because he just did all this flailing around with his arms and it just did not look like any type of established dancing. He also did a bunch of breakdancing manuevers and two stepping. It was pretty funny to watch because with his glasses and all he looked like such an intellectual. Is this how they cut loose?

It was a new experience for me because in this atmosphere one was truly able to move in any form they felt without the fear of ridicule. I danced the night away. My movements were more of a free flowing alternative rave form of dancing. Arms in the air, fluttering wild while my feet stepped back and forth all over the place. The movements varied from fast to slow based on the pace of the song and it was not abnormal to move slower during a faster paced beat. My body was calling the plays, all I had to do was comply.

At the end of the night I came home with this sense of freedom and awareness. I also had a sense of hunger so I found the nearest 24 hour pizza shop and chowed down. This sudden awareness of all the diversity in the dance universe. You don't expect to look to a college party for find such variation, you go to theatres and concerts. Yet in the vicinity of my own peers such a paradox of styles existed and that blew my mind. My eyes are now opened to endless possibilities and to me, that is one of the most enchanting characteristics of dance.

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