Dork Dancing is a Sober Alternative
Hi, my name is Nightlife and I have a dirty little secret. I want to keep you out. Because you, sober, aren’t enough for me. You aren’t welcomed here. You are too uncomfortable. Less awkward, please. You need to change. Let me help you. Would you like a drink?
You can be like us. Come on, take a sip with me. With a few drinks inside, you will be enough. I’m beginning to like what I see. So much more fun, confident, and interesting, too. You can play with us, flirt with us, dance with us. Hey, I think I like you.
Nightlife is exclusive and its love is conditional & fleeting. It’s a social setting that’s overly dependent on alcohol. A cup of confidence at the bar, $7.99. That will last you 30 minutes, then please come back for more. The dance floor, a stage for performance after refilling.
Yes, we at Dork Dancing work to offer an alternative. We are critical of nightlife and its dependence on alcohol because of what it can do to the quality of mental health, dance, and the connection it facilitates.
We are working to build a sober dance community built on a foundation of acceptance & inclusivity, rooted in our humanity and common struggles. Dancing can be a space for shared vulnerability, leading to the kind of connections that facilitate authentic, real, long lasting relationships.
Imagine throwing away the bottle, sparing the liver & sleep, and keeping the money in your pocket too, while still meeting awesome people and having fun. There’s nothing wrong with going out, drinking, and dancing if you have a healthy relationship with it: it can be fun! More power to you. But many people do not have a healthy relationship with it. And I, Ethan, was one of those people.
I always had some tension with the intermix between nightlife, dancing, and the jungle of mixed incentives for going out. Every time I went out, and drank, I asked myself “why?”
The reasons were typically driven to satisfy a deeper emotion: loneliness. I wanted to connect and going out seemed to be the most popular way to do so. Socializing and nightlife, and alcohol, go hand-in-hand, in-hand.
For me, going out & drinking did not solve loneliness. Like a mosquito bite, I itched it, making the problem bigger; only feeling worse, both physically and mentally. More lonely. Am I escaping or facing myself?
This strategy simply did not work, and yet, I struggled to find social alternatives. Whether with friends, or in romance, alcohol’s connection to nightlife seemed central.
I believe there should be another option for people who would like to explore something new. A social setting, still with music & dance, without the drinks & the darkness.
At Dork Dancing we go out too, it’s just in the middle of the day. We are inspired to contribute to a counterculture that doesn’t exploit alcohol as the center of connection & confidence. Instead we challenge ourselves openly, while sober, to dance directly with the play between fear & love, not alcohol.
We want to connect authentically and wholeheartedly over what matters most, our mental health. We want to advocate and raise awareness, challenging ourselves to grow, stepping out of the darkness of nightlife, and into the lightness of “daylife.” For us, mental health is at the center of our connection and dancing is the center of our fun: bottles aside, lights on.
Dork Dancing depends entirely on charitable giving. We hope you may consider supporting. We offer some fun rewards too.