Our Content Director recalls the moment he decided his days of cutting shapes in the club had come to an end.

When I turned 40, I decided to throw a big party. I’m not usually into my own birthday celebrations, but decided that the organisation of this extravaganza would distract me from the fact that I was, inexplicably, four decades old. Since it would be the last birthday party I would throw, it needed to be special. I hired a nightclub in Soho (now home to The Box), gave it a 1980s theme, and paid the late Mr Steve Strange to perform three of his hits on the club’s small stage. (I insisted, much to his dismay, that he began the act emerging, like Venus, from a giant gold scallop shell that I had found among the props backstage at what was once a strip cabaret venue.) The party had a pertinent name, too: in big black embossed letters on the shiny mirror-gold invitation it said: “The Last Disco”.

There were three reasons for the name. One was that I had always been enthralled by the stories surrounding the infamous New York nightclub, Studio 54, and had recently read Mr Anthony Haden-Guest’s biography of the club, The Last Party; second was the brilliant Mr Whit Stillman film, The Last Days Of Disco, inspired by Studio 54, which I repeatedly viewed long after it had come out. Finally, and most significantly, I had decided that my 40th birthday party would be the last time I ever danced.

This wasn’t a decision I came to lightly. In my teens and early twenties – in the late 1980s – I had loved falling all over dance floors, flinging arms and drinks over everyone around me, without a moment’s thought about what I was trying to achieve or how I must have looked. The rave scene in the early 1990s changed things slightly since all you were required to do was smile absently, wave an arm and nod your head a bit. And then soon, as my thirties kicked in, parties in abandoned King’s Cross car lots gave way to cheesy weddings in countryside marquees. I think this was the first time I began to question the merits of dancing. It was at weddings that I first witnessed dad dancing, toddler bopping, and granny shuffling; it was at weddings that it began to dawn on me that dancing in public definitely had a sell-by date; that older limbs rarely moved in quite such a coherent manner as younger ones, that adapting moves learned in one decade to suit the music of another could easily leave onlookers with the impression you were doing a solo conga.

The trouble is that as soon as you become self-conscious about dancing, the moment you rationally question why, just because someone is playing some music, you feel the urge to contort your body into some peculiar and random shapes, the urge diminishes. Dancing is, if truth be told, intrinsically quite dumb (unless you’re Messrs Sergei Polunin or Justin Bieber) and once you’ve discovered that, there is no going back.

So, on that Saturday night of my 40th birthday, I danced and danced like there was no tomorrow (which, when it came to discos, there wasn’t). I barely left the lit-up dance floor, only spoke to my guests if they came and danced next to me (“Hung Up” by Madonna was a crowd-pleaser that evening) and only stopped to breathe when the lights went up and waiters walked around the club carrying plates of Krispy Kreme donuts.

And that was the last time I danced. Now at weddings, I sit and chat to the mums at the tables as everyone piles onto the dance floor; at parties, I hang out with the smokers, even though I don’t smoke (it’s always a better-looking crowd out there, anyway), and if friends start bopping uncomfortably in the sitting room after a dinner, I quickly head to the kitchen for another drink. I don’t judge those who do dance, even if they’re over 40; in fact, sometimes I even admire them. I just know that I can’t join them in case I relapse and mistakenly believe that my feet still have rhythm – basically, I’m on the 12 step-free program. So whether it’s a funky chicken or a foxtrot, a dutty wine or a cat daddy, a Cha Cha Slide or Gangnam Style, I’m not dancing.

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