The Melbourne Shuffle is an underground dance style created in Melbourne during the early 1990's at warehouse parties. By the late 1990's it was spreading with passion across the world's dance floors, and was dubbed the Melbourne Shuffle.

We didn't call it the Melbourne Shuffle during the 1990's, to us it was just dancing, good dancing, remarkable dancing.

The style is notable for its fancy footwork in a small area, usually a few paces to the left, then right. Sort of a sideways shuffle. But it wasn't limited to that. It is a free style form which encourages experimentation, individual moves and most importantly, freedom of expression.

A number of elements contributed to the development of the Melbourne Shuffle, many related to the main environment it took place in, which locally we called 'dance parties'. These were also called raves and warehouse parties, but in Melbourne there was an emphasis on dance, whether they happened in underground warehouse parties, or mainstream clubs.

Here are some examples:

Touching The Light

You need your hands and arms doing something, first to keep balance, but one move some called 'touching the light'.

The light was the laser. In these video stills from Every Picture 2 at the TVU Warehouse in 1992, you can see exactly what we mean by Touching The Light.

Lasers were new then, and cost a fortune to hire. Plus they were just monochromatic (one color) green. We used prisms to get different colors. With the low warehouse roof, the lasers shone straight into your eyes (which we liked) and you could easily touch them. The lasers in these early parties didn't have safety filters, and were strong enough to light a cigarette, from about a metre away.

Stylistically as a communal dance, Touching The Light meant people faced one direction, towards the light. We rarely faced each other. Also with lasers in your eyes, all you can see is the laser.

This element brought about the sideways movement of the Melbourne Shuffle. By moving sideways, you are always looking into the light.

Strobe

In your Face is about the best description for the strobe effect, and in a confined area like a low roof warehouse, it is absolute. Pics left Every Picture 1992.

Strobes were cheap to hire, and remarkably effective with techno. You could accurately time the strobe flashes with the beat. Generally strobe came in on hard acid tracks, alternating with lasers and spacey lighting for ambient intros and techno tracks etc.

We had strobes all over the place, from all walls and all linked together, so with thick smoke it was like a dense flashing fog which completely disorientated you - and that's without taking any drugs!

Strobe was a burst of energy. Suddenly you're pumping, if you weren't already. Arm movements and silhouettes look fantastic strobing in front of you, and a popular Melbourne Shuffle movement was watching your own hands move in the strobe.

Pic Left  Is from Hardware 5 1994 with a couple of guys showing the combination of strobe and Touching the Light hand moves, being used in the dawn light, without either strobe or lasers operating.

Pic left is a 1/25 of a second strobe flash video still. The woman in the foreground watching her own hand in the strobe is Kate Bathgate, pioneer radio show host who with Madrod (not pictured) produced 'Beat In The Street', on Melbourne's 3RRR - FM for years. Beat In The Street was Australia's first all techno radio show. Free MP3 downloads of Beat In The Street, 1993.

Kate was also an 1980's Goth. Goth's love to dance too, and their Zombie and Banshee moves mixed with the Melbourne Shuffle, and were frequently seen across Melbourne. Pics left Banshee dancing basketball 'cheer squad' and some of the team 1994. The local competitions basketball team was called 'The Scream' and sponsored by Goth club Apocalypse. Pics below left Apocalypse 1994.

Goths liked strobe too. The dark blue and brooding kind, called terrastrobes. And you haven't lived until you've seen Goth girls dancing to techno in old wedding gowns in an underground Goth club.

Hip Hop Meets Ballet

There were a lot more pretty girls at techno parties than Hip Hop gigs, the B Boys told us and both the guys and the gals, arrived by the bus load to the early parties.

Melbourne is Australia's dance capital with all the major dance schools and colleges based here. Melbourne is a very athletic city as well, and recognised as the sporting capital of Australia (Australian Rules Football was created in Melbourne, the 1956 Olympic Games were in Melbourne). Melbournese like moving, it's an adrenalin rush, and it's contagious.

Girls tend to start dance classes from about 6-7 years old. These are general Ballet/contemporary dance schools. Virtually every suburb that has a football oval, has a dance school. Some go onto one of a number of professional dance/ballet schools at a university level, which generally have about 400 applicants for 20 places, per class per year. Students come from around the country and overseas to attend, many staying on and living in Melbourne afterwards.

These colleges vary in focus from traditional classical Ballet to, Contemporary dance which generally refers to 20th Century art dance styles. Social dance generally refers to jazz, tap, ballroom, and the like, which are touched on briefly in historical overviews at the colleges.

I was introduced to dance parties by some female professional contemporary dance friends. "How nice" they said, "we can dance and party at the same time - perfect".

Techno has a rigid mechanical rhythm, and mechanical is not considered a bad thing in techno. This was the age of Technology and the music created by it, was machine based. That meant even though it may get a bit boring at times, for dancers you can never loose your beat, you'll have 10 - 12 hours non stop to dance at will.

Hip Hop on the other hand has a slower broken beat, called Break Beat, which suits Hip Hop dancing perfectly. So for the B Boys at a techno party, with the sight of all the beautiful young ladies with 10 -15 years dance training in full flight, they were in heaven. And with the music racing as fast as their hearts were pounding, they decided to strut their stuff as well. They'd do Hip Hop moves which suited the faster tempo, and the girls liked what they saw.

These early parties were mixed gay and straight types of events so the attractions weren't strictly opposite sex. The gay guys tended more towards Madonna drag show type styles, and the gay girls more like lesbian porn flicks. These were not reserved timid parties. These were hot and sweaty. Pic left Tasty - Commerce House 1994.

So these three elements ballet, hip-hop & gay dance are the main contemporary sources of the Melbourne Shuffle style. Between them are some strong common elements too, which reference much earlier heritages. First noticeable in the footwork is traditional tap dancing moves, seen in almost any Fred Astaire movie or musical from the 1920's-1940's, or any with the extraordinary Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson. Tap comes from street dance in New York at the turn of 1800/1900 in a similar cultural combination with African Americans and Irish/Scot Celts showing each other their stuff. The two cultures (races) normally forbidden by law at the time, to mix socially.

Also in a heritage earlier than tap, is traditional folk/cultural dance. Melbourne has a large and active Celtic community. From it's birth, Scots, Irish and Welsh Celts have lived in Melbourne, with large migrations during the 1880's gold rush. They actually predate Melbourne as a city, settling a few decades earlier in places such as Port Fairy. Yes, the faeries (and moonshine) came with them. When I see the Melbourne Shuffle, I also see Irish and Scottish Highland dance.

These sideways/foot-behind steps (pic left) remind me of Highland sword dancing - 2 swords on the ground form an X, and you step/hop between them in different patterns. No question, with the arms in the air, Irish dance generally keeps the arms down, Scots tend to fling arms around. My great Uncle Ern came out from the Scottish Highlands to Australia in 1880. I have his hand written pocket journal where he describes Highland sword dancing on the (sailing) ships deck each night to the music of pipers. - 70 young single women were court marshalled by the ships matron too, for "Rebellion", by repeatedly dancing late into the balmy nights and breaking their curfews!

Space

Both Break Dance and Ballet require a fair bit of space to move. Clubs were always too crowded, but warehouses had lots, but still not enough for Hip Hop or Ballet styles in a crowd of 1000. Swinging arms and legs around would always kick or hit someone, or you, in the face or crotch. These were happy friendly parties - Ecstasy, Happy Happy Joy Joy types of affairs, not aggressive para-combatant types. Everyone was nice, respectful and out to have fun, not fights.

So a more restricted dance style was often required. About arms length sideways and a bit more, was about as much as you could expect on a typical underground warehouse dance floor for most of the night. So dancers started experimenting. Pic above (Every Picture - 1992) shows electronic musician Voitek in a white top, with his distinctive sideways elbow move, one on the beat, the other on the off beat.

The other drama was the floor, usually concrete and a bit uneven. So your footwork needed to be pretty safe too. No point breaking an ankle. Pic left Classic Melbourne Shuffle sideways step at the Brunswick Street Fringe Festival free street party 1994.

Others took the restrictions of space to new heights (sorry, couldn't resist a trashy pun). Don't Try this at Home!

Pics left More from the Brunswick Street Fringe Festival free street party 1994.