If you’ve managed to nab a ticket to the sold-out SOCIAL! the social distance dance club at the Park Avenue Armory, you’ll receive, ahead of your performance, a video of David Byrne (wearing a pretty awesome kilt) demonstrating the moves he’s hoping everyone will learn for the final song of the show. They’re pretty simple—“puppet legs,” “hold the traffic,” “vibrating palms”—and not terribly technical.
For the rest of SOCIAL!—a 55-minute dance experience with you and 99 of your not-so-closest friends—you’re on your own. Literally: You’ll be standing in a six-foot red, blue, green, yellow, or purple circle inside the cavernous 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall; there’s 12 to 15 feet between each circle, so no matter your wingspan, you’ll never come in contact with other circle-dwellers. A disembodied female voice greets you as you’re led into the hall: “You are solo in your circle but not alone.”
Created by set designer Christine Jones (Let the Right One In, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), movement director Steven Hoggett (Black Watch, Once, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), and musician and Talking Heads cofounder David Byrne (American Utopia)—the trio also curated the playlist, which was mixed by New York City DJ Natasha Diggs—SOCIAL! is, of course, social only in terms of distance. If you come with a friend, chances are you’ll get separated; after taking a COVID-19 rapid test, everyone gets a numbered passport and sent into a waiting room. (Our roomful of masked dancers was dubbed “Shaky Knees,” a reference to a move Byrne showed us in the preshow video—not, as I first suspected, to my rickety 40-something knees that crackle like popcorn when I do a squat.) Plus, you can’t choose your spot on the dance floor—which also means that wallflowers can’t slink into the corner.
If you’re the Billy Idol type—“When there’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove/ Well I’m dancing with myself”—SOCIAL! is your jam. But if you’re not a dancin’ fool, 55 minutes will probably feel like 155. Those in need of some visual inspiration should look to the raised platform in the center of the floor: Working the laptops is DJ Mad Love, aka Alvin Ailey dancer Karine Plantadit (a Tony nominee for Come Fly Away), and she is marvelous. Another groovy visual component: the psychedelic lighting by four-time Tony winner Kevin Adams (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Idiot, The 39 Steps, Spring Awakening).
Byrne is there, at least in voice, to talk you through some steps—one dance features a hand-sanitizing move, another involves dodging a discarded pizza box on the sidewalk—if you can hear him over the music, that is. Have I become that crotchety oldster complaining that the music is too loud? It actually wasn’t—I just wish Byrne had been louder. One thing I did hear him say: “You’re a machine! A beautiful machine! A dancing machine!” I almost believed him.
SOCIAL! the social distance dance club opened at the Park Avenue Armory on April 13, 2021 and runs through April 22. Tickets and information: armoryonpark.org
