I Can't Handle This Club Right Now: Techno Trials in Berlin

The last three nights, I’ve been darting around the network of dance clubs surreptitiously dotting Berlin’s Mitte, that is, it’s Big Island. I say surreptitiously because the good ones are necessarily the hidden ones. I’ll walk up to a small group of darkly dressed dudes looking moderately suspicious around one of those vertical-bar street barriers, and I’ll ask the first one who greets me, “What’s here?” (hopefully it sounds better auf Deutsch). He’ll chuckle as he lets the name slip out, as if to say, “Of course this is [insert name here]. How could you not have known?” Sorry: I’m used to neon signs telling me what’s where.

Entering a club is also a surprise for the born-and-raised American, as the Black Eyed Peas and their Top-40 pals do not serenade the walls with their three-minute songs. This is Berlin: they have techno here. This entails a fundamental change in dancing mechanics. Instead of simply placing your hands differently for the verse, the chorus, or the breakdown-bridge, or simply mouthing the words exaggeratedly and making tense, awkward body movements that correspond to each syllable, suddenly most of the threads of your musical security blanket are stripped away. Here, you only get one short bass-line or a molecule of jittery sound strung out over five minutes and counting, and accompanied by an obligatory chest-shaking sub-bass pattern. 

So how do you dance to this crap, you ask? Well, if Berliners are a source to trust, it’s a lot of stepping back and forth, with a fist bump here and there, and perhaps even some head motion for certain intense stretches. Sure, this may appear sometimes like you’re doing The Hustle, but at least you won’t be that asshole showing off the foot movements he or she learned on Dance Dance Revolution for 25 minutes straight. The key to dancing to repetitive music is dancing repetitively, so do something, keep doing that thing until you’ve been bored of it for several minutes, then vary it slightly. It’s evolution, baby.

One last piece of advice: don’t step on any feet. I don’t know if I’ve sampled a biased population, but from my experience, Berliners hate having their steps stepped upon. After accidentally trodding on some dude’s toes, I found myself facing a mean-faced mug for several bars of music, so I resorted to some reciprocation: “Step on my foot then! Whatever, just step on my foot!” He didn’t oblige. Maybe he didn’t speak English.