Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s

Flora Pitrolo is a Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and Syracuse University London. Her work investigates alternative European performance and music cultures of the 1980s, with a special focus on Italy. She publishes both as a scholar and as a journalist, and is active as a DJ and producer in various archival and experimental music scenes. Marko Zubak is a Researcher at the Croatian Institute of History in Zagreb, specialising in popular culture in socialist Eastern Europe. His publications include The Yugoslav Youth Press (1968-1980), and he has curated the exhibitions ‘Yugoslav Youth Press as Underground Press’ and ‘‘Stayin’ Alive: Socialist Disco Culture’.

“Promisingly, the anthology stands to serve as a jumping-off point for researchers of both historical and contemporary disco dance cultures. … Dance scholars and practitioners … will find the histories included in the anthology productive routes for future academic exploration. … With selections drawn from each of the highlighted disco scenes, the authors’ playlists offer a rich resource for DJs and dancers across the world eager to find new ways to embody disco’s polyvalent pulse.” (Elizabeth June Bergman, Dance Chronicle, Vol. 46 (2), 2023)

• Chapter 1: Introduction. Disco Heterotopias: Other Places, Other Spaces, Other Lives.- Chapter 2: Montreal, Funkytown: Two Decades of Disco History.- Chapter 3: Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s Brazil.- Chapter 4: Gimmick! Italo Disco, Copy and Consumption.- Chapter 5: Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International Music.- Chapter 6: Disco, Dancing, Globalization and Class in 1980s Hindi Cinema.- Chapter 7: Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution: Sexuality and The Politics of Disco in China Since the 1980s.- Chapter 8: Non-stop, I Want to Live Non-stop: The Role of Disco is Late Socialist Czechoslovakia.- Chapter 9: Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound of Late Socialism.- Chapter 10: Other Voices of the Orient: Lebanese Disco and Nightlife During the Civil War.- Chapter 11: Disco and Discontent in Nigeria: A Conversation.- Chapter 12: Outer Space, Futurism, and The Quest for Disco Utopia.- Chapter 13: Epilogue.Decolonising Disco: Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco.