Mosh like you mean it

by Ebun Lawore, Staff Writer

Illustration by Pilot Roberts

There is a dancing-related epidemic. We all have known this for a long time. It seems like for at least a decade, music lovers everywhere have been complaining about how nobody dances anymore. Nobody shakes ass in the club, and nobody two-steps in the concert venue, even when the performer asks them to. 

I agree with this sentiment. Most people don’t dance as they should. So this article may initially seem out of character for me, ’cause I am about to complain about moshing — a lot.

I was pretty annoyed at the end of Bassvictim’s set a few weeks ago. Partially because of the ringing in my ears, but also because of the way that people jumped up and down to their music. It was a mosh that I had never before seen at Oberlin: one full of rigor and aggression, but without passion.

The next day I said to one of my friends:

“Everyone was moshing so performatively.”

It was one of those statements you make without even thinking about it, but the feeling is so strong that it just comes out of you.

I don’t want to use “performative” as a buzzword, so let me clarify. A lot of the time, it feels like Oberlin students only dance at concerts or parties when it looks cool to dance, not because they want to dance.

This becomes obvious when you notice the specific kinds of events that people dance at, and how they dance at those events. For example, Bassvictim. Moshing is cool when the music is loud and electronic. Moshing is also cool when the act playing the concert is basically famous. Also, only moshing is cool. You’d hardly catch a person on the floor of the ’Sco that night actually busting a move. But the worst part of it all is that moshing is only cool because everyone else is doing it.

I know that this moshing is performative because the second that you change the context of the music, all of the movement changes. Once the Bassvictim song turns from an extremely loud ’Sco performance into a part of a DJ set at Tank, suddenly nobody wants to dance anymore. Suddenly everyone is standing around, their arms and legs unmoving, like a pack of sardines in a tin. Why? Because it isn’t cool to dance at a Co-op party. It’s cool to chainsmoke cigarettes outside, hotbox the bathroom, or go home with someone, but god forbid someone lifts their feet off the ground on the dance floor. 

Yes, dancing is performance art, but it was never meant to be performative. Dancing is supposed to be a reaction to the music. It is supposed to be a way to express how the music you hear makes you feel. Historically, people have danced with the most rigor and passion when the music has been its best. But when I look around, that isn’t the case at Oberlin. People jump around and punch the air when they can’t even feel the rhythm, yet they nonchalantly sway when the music is incredible. For some reason the students of Oberlin only dance as a way to conform to the crowd around them. Their dancing is never unique or emotional, or even connected to the music that they are listening to. It is only ever connected to how they want to be perceived while listening to it. 

There is a dancing-related epidemic, and in some places people just aren’t dancing. But here, people aren’t dancing the way that they should. For a student body that prides itself on musical appreciation and nonconformity, you’d really think that these people would be able to mosh like they mean it.