Earlier this week, my daughter essentially disowned me. She was both embarrassed and appalled by my behaviour. She could barely say the words out loud… her father had been to Zouk nightclub.
I think she was almost sick in her mouth.
I could’ve said I’d been to a brothel, and her disgust could’ve barely registered any higher.
Normally, teenagers can’t picture their parents in bed together. My daughter can’t picture me twizzling my legs to MC Hammer’s You Can’t Touch This. And nobody twizzled their gangly limbs like me in the ’90s. I looked like Bambi on ice, on acid.
But I had hit the Zouk dance floors many times in the last century; an unpalatable scenario that my daughter is struggling with.
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Zouk in the news
Our conversation began innocuously enough. Browsing the headlines, I noted that Zouk Group intended to temporarily close its clubbing venues for renovations.
“I want to go there, when I’m old enough,” she said, casually.
“Yeah, it’s a good club,” I replied, equally casually.
I got a raised eyebrow, which suggested my daughter was either not impressed or was working on her Roger Moore 007 impression. “How do you know?” She wondered.
“I’ve been to Zouk,” I said.
Her look of horror suggested I’d cheated on her mother with her best friend’s mother.
“No, you haven’t,” she insisted.
“I have. I used to go there regularly.”
Her updated look of horror suggested I’d cheated on her mother with her Mandarin tutor. (In fairness, he is a terrific Mandarin tutor.)
“You couldn’t go to Zouk,” she spluttered.
She made Zouk sound like the Ten Courts of Hell at Haw Par Villa, but I would not be denied. I pointed out that I had, indeed, enjoyed a little Mambo Jambo at Zouk. I’d also partied all night long at Top Ten at Orchard Towers (OK, not all night long. This was still Singapore.)
But I’d rocked with Tania’s rockers at the Anywhere club. I’d lit up at Sparks and danced like the Village People at Studebaker. (It took a while to work out why there were fewer women at Studebaker.)
Credit: Facebook/Zouk Group
A generational divide
By this point, my daughter was practically covering her ears and begging me to make it stop. She was failing to compute the information, as if I was supplying her with an A.I. version of my younger, partying self. It had to be fake news. After all, I had white hair. White-haired men can’t dance.
She was adamant that I didn’t learn MC Hammer’s dance moves (I really did. It was really awful.) She didn’t think I was my housing estate’s answer to Vanilla Ice. (I did. It was pitiful). She just cringed.
Zouk was for young people, she insisted, not middle-aged fathers who used words like “cringed”. The two just didn’t go together.
Look, there’s always been a disconnect between generations and this isn’t a grumpy old man rambling on about “these kids today”.
But the digital generation seems to have accelerated – or exacerbated – a traditional social phenomenon.
Punk fans mocked Beatles fans for being out of touch. Just as Beatles fans ridiculed Frank Sinatra’s crooners, and that’s fine.
That’s cultural evolution. There’s always been a gap. But the gap between digital and analogue can feel like a chasm.
You don’t use Snapchat? Then you obviously can’t work a phone or a modern flushing toilet. You don’t consume content on TikTok? Then you obviously only watch black and white films and broad Hokkien comedies. You don’t follow Spotify trends? Then you obviously think Tate McRae is a Scottish goalkeeper.
And that’s OK. Gen Z should go its own way. It would be weird if our interests were in lockstep with each other. But I draw the line at the “OK, Boomer” stereotypes when it comes to clubbing. We can dance, damn it. Gen X can still party like it’s 1999. In fact, it can feel like we’re the only ones still partying like it’s 1999.
Taking back the dance floor
Last June, The New York Times reported on a group of Brussels retirement-home residents grooving to electronic music at night, reminding us all that the Baby Boomers were the original nightclubbers. They literally went there, did that, and bought the T-shirt.
Last July, the ABC highlighted the return of Gen X clubbers, the original rave generation of the ’90s, taking back the dance floor and partying in safe spaces across Australia.
There’s a similar phenomenon in the UK, where the struggling nightlife economy is being helped by the over-40s — the “retired ravers” — going back to their roots.
And in Chicago, the Earlybirds Club hosts clubbing sessions for the over-40s, which start and finish earlier to accommodate busy, midlife schedules.
And my 72-year-old mother is currently recovering from a broken leg. But if she hears Motown on the radio, she turns into Michael Jackson on crutches.
Like every other dancing silver citizen, she’s doing her bit for an ageing population. Apart from the obvious physical benefits, dancing comes with social and cognitive benefits, utilising those motor skills and warding off loneliness. The more we dance, the less of a burden we potentially become on our healthcare systems.
There are only upsides to getting down on the dancefloor.
So let’s dance, whatever our age, without ridicule. And when Zouk reopens later in the year, I fully expect an invite. I’ll break out the MC Hammer moves. My daughter will make a break for the exit.
