This Is Not a Rave: In the Shadow of a Subculture

From the Lindy Hop to the Lambada, popular dance has worried the protectors of our public morality. New York City's notorious cabaret laws are enforced today – it's common to see "No Dancing Allowed" at your local saloon – and small bars without licenses have been harassed and shuttered for failing to keep their patrons wiggling in their seats. Rave culture is a worldwide phenomenon of unprecedented mass-appeal and, perhaps for that reason, an especial threat to the world's corporatized wallflowers. Whether because of its catalyst drug, MDMA/Ecstasy, its fashion of defiant adolescence, or its unofficial credo of Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect, rave has elicited an especially punitive response. Tara McCall traces rave's underground history in Detroit, Ibiza, and London, to the bacchanals that now attract tens of thousands of revelers. In a highly personal tour supplemented by 50 photographs and the voices of hundreds of young dancers who tell their own stories, McCall illuminates the wild fashion, drugs, hypnotic music, and most importantly, the hedonistic dance of a subculture now being driven back underground. This Is Not A Rave will challenge and entertain. It may get you up out of your seat.