Rocking Out at The Golden Dance Party

You don’t need to be a dancer to enjoy Henry Alford’s book, “And Then We Danced: A Voyage Into the Groove.” But if you’ve ever felt the buzz that comes from executing a successful swing-dance move or that walking-on-air glow after any good workout, you may have the potential to become “a gentleman dancer” like him, or maybe just a happy living-room dancer bouncing around to classic Motown.

 An investigative humorist known for his accounts of wearing pajamas around New York and posing as an adventurous dog groomer, Alford is the author of four previous books, including “Big Kiss: One Actor’s Desperate Attempt to Claw His Way to the Top,” which won a Thurber Prize for American Humor.

 In 2011 he accepted a New York Times assignment to report on a Zumba class. Six months after the story came out, he was still “waking up at six thirty two days a week so I could hustle up to 14th Street and shake it shake it shake it like a Polaroid,” although he demoted himself to Zumba Gold, a less intense “dance party” for older people.

 He had just turned 50, after all, which “in gay years is 350.”

 But he liked the way he felt, and how he was losing weight, and by the next summer, harried by work, he started boogieing to Stevie Wonder in his living room. “Not only do I believe that anyone can dance, but I encourage this Anyone to dance wherever the hell he wants to,” he writes encouragingly. 

 In his breezy new book, he recounts how he went on to explore a dozen dance modes (including ballet, tap, jazz, ecstatic dance and contact improv, a wild 50-year-old form that’s become his favorite), danced with Alzheimer’s patients and appeared in a performance of choreographer Twyla Tharp’s “The One Hundreds.” He reflects on his limited dance background (ballroom dance class in elementary school, New York’s haute preppy Gold and Silver ball as a Hotchkiss junior). Tossed into the mix are short, punchy bios of such dance world luminaries as Tharp, Savion Glover and Bob Fosse. 

 “Dance is a fascinating prism through which to write cultural history,” he points out, when reached at his New York apartment. Religion, spirituality, emotion, rebellion and most important, pure physicality, are all part of “the art that vanishes.” In three years of researching the book, it’s worth noting, Alford threw his back out three times. “That I entered into this scenario at age 49 is, in retrospect, crazy-making,” he said. “At one point my back was so bad I had to pull up my shorts with salad tongs.”

 Now 56, Henry Alford has sensible advice for others with an urge to dance. “Salsa, ballroom, ecstatic dancing, and tap are suited for older dancers because the motion is a little more limited. But ultimately you need to do whichever one is going to bring you in contact with people you want to see week after week. That’s really the joy for social dancers – the coffee afterward can be as fun as the actual dancing.”

Henry Alford will be signing copies of  “And Then We Danced: A Voyage Into the Groove” at the 22nd Annual Sharon Summer Book Signing on Friday, August 3, at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, from 6 to 8 pm.