A scene from Weddy Weddy, which is one of the popular dances. Street dances are kept every night in Jamaica, mainly in inner-city areas with patrons partying from as early as midnight until sunrise. (Photo: Jermaine Barnaby)

What started out as a few street dances in the early 1960s and 1970s has now burgeoned into a barrage of street sessions, where revellers launch out in the early morning, and party until sunrise.

These street dances which have gained some form of copyright legitimacy, coining names like Passa Passa, Weddy Weddy, Japsey Thursdays, Uptown Mondays, Hot Mondays, Flankers Fridays, Feelings Fridays and Beenie Tuesdays, and a host of others, have now come to prominence within the last several years.

What started out as a trickle has now turned into a flood. A flood, because it is now routine to have two or three of these dances on any one night, seven days per week.

The question some are asking is, whether or not having so many dances everyday is an overkill. For Dr Donna Hope, Lecturer in Reggae Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, it is not so, as all the dances receive adequate support. In fact, on all the nights, at every one of the dances, the venues are usually filled to capacity, even though several are being held every night or morning rather.
On a typical Wednesday night, which runs into Thursday morning, one is able to find patrons partying hard at Weddy Weddy, put on by the veteran sound system owner/selector Wee Pow of Stone Love. After Weddy Weddy, which usually ends between 2:00 am and 2:30 am, everyone launches out to Passa Passa, where they party for another four hours. At Passa Passa, virtually everyone who was at Weddy Weddy or at a dance put on by deejay Lushus, goes there to dance away the rest of the morning.

On Mondays it is the same routine, this is also the case for Tuesdays (pronounced 'Chewsdays' in some parts of the dancehall), and for every day for the entire week, the party-hopping routine continues virtually unceasing, that is until the sun comes up.

The dancehall moves to a different beat. In this culture or what academics, such as Dr Hope allude to as 'space', the rules are set by the people who make the dances - disc jockeys who operate the sound systems and the promoters who coin and execute the ideas for the staging the sessions. The dancehall moves to the beat of its own drum.

"These dances are held every night because dancehall's calendar facilitates these events...ask any hardcore dancehall participant or artiste and they will list out the various events that form a part of their activities each week.

They go from one to the other as a part of their 'work' in dancehall. From a scholarly point of view, dancehall is a part of the society but also counteracts what the society represents. Therefore, the accepted model of work-life from 9:00 - 5:00 is overturned by dancehall and its activities are conducted in the dead of night when the 9:00 - 5:00 massive is asleep, in contravention of the general pulse of life of the society," says Dr Hope.

In other words, this is their nine to five job, partying, dancing, drinking and staying up all night.

Sashauna McKenzie sauntered through a thick cloud of smoke and sweating bodies. At intervals she dodged a shoe or two that was trampling to the beats of music and were coming down with the latest dance moves. She is a plump 22-year-old, who was dressed in a skimpy white suit. She frequents these sessions and is vehemently against any notion that too many dances are being kept.

"No is nat too much, because you can go a one one day and go a next one di other day if you missed it," says McKenzie. "(Furthermore) you have enuf people fi guh all a dem so I don't tink is an overkill."

Not everyone agrees with Hope and McKenzie. Orville Hall of Dance Expressions, a group, which teaches the latest dancehall moves, says it is difficult for patrons to attend all these dances, because so many are happening at the same time. He says that this is made worse by the Noise Abatement Act, which stipulates that it is illegal for sessions to go beyond midnight during the week and 2:00 am on weekends. With the police on a mission to enforce the law, Hall says it is difficult to go from one dance to the other because they, with the exception of a few, all end at the same time.

Beres Hammond woos Toronto fans

Toronto film fest includes Spike Lee, Coens movies

Caribbean Model Search unveils Sunday