Routine Breakdown: A Weekly Adventure!

December 8, 2016 Melissa Gerr

I didn’t think I’d have another dance-related “Routine Breakdown” this soon, but it was during the election aftermath when this opportunity presented itself. So in keeping with the “I’ve always wanted to do that” spirit, I said yes.

For more than six years, Baltimore’s Four Hours of Funk DJs have been spinning and heating up the Wind Up Space on North Avenue and Charles Street every third Friday to a packed floor and a grateful dance following. I’d heard about it often but kept missing it or putting it off, and then a new friend from improv class said she was going. So it was too hard to turn down the opportunity.

Besides, I really needed to Shake It Out, as Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe so aptly coined (and played!) the phrase.

For five bucks, you can dance and sweat the night away in what I have to say is one of the most diverse Baltimore events I’ve attended in a long time — ethnicity, gender ID, age (OK, that one to a lesser degree) and absolutely in dance style.

Arriving just after 10 was, in fact, on the early side, so we helped warm up the dance floor. Then my friend suggested we walk over to The Crown. I followed her around the YNot lot onto Charles, then through a doorway crowded with smokers, past a bouncer and up some dark steps. The music got louder and louder as we approached.

Curiously, at the landing steps sits a tall Eastern European-looking crown (the namesake I guess) behind yellowed plexiglass built into the wall, but there was nothing explaining its origin or significance, nor did my friend or the bouncer have any details. (Note: Put that on the ‘to find out’ list.) When I told a friend later that weekend where I was, he laughed and asked if I saw his daughter. I may have, but I was dancing too hard to notice.

At the top of the steps, there are two rooms. To the left is the blue room — tiny, good loud music, full bar and packed but mostly with people who were happy to drink and chat, though there is a small dance floor. To the right is the red room, this evening with live music, bar, theater lighting, a long glittery curtain backdrop for the stage that looked right out of Ed Sullivan and there was fog.

Lots and lots of fog.

My friend and I bounced back and forth from The Crown to Wind Up Space a few times and the crowds swelled into the evening.

It was a sweaty, groovy blast. Mission accomplished.

The Verdict: Yaaaassss! Can’t wait to go back!

Melissa Gerr is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.