Under The Influence

DJ U.N.I.T.Y. had us under the influence on Sunday…the influence of some serious dance therapy!!! You know when you have a bad day…or week…(or month, or even a yearrrrrrrrrr…ahem. Sorry. Just can’t do that without busting into the “Friends” theme song.)?

Well, you could always have a good cry. All you need to do is watch this Justin Timberlake video and let these old people overflow your tear ducts:

OR you could just plain dance it out. And that’s exactly what our lovely DJ helped all of us do.

DJ U.N.I.T.Y.’s playlist started out being inspired by all the different influences in her life: marriage, growing up in the inner city, faith, friends, culture, Chicago, and…DDPP. Duh. In fact, DDPP has been such a positive influence in her life that she eventually abandoned her theme and was all like “Fuck it, let’s just shake our asses!!” And you KNOW Unity’s not messing around when she swears! She turned that studio into a regular Dancers Gone Wild. Ladies be takin’ their shirts off, ladies be almost hitting other ladies in the face by accident (sorry, Catherine…), ladies be screaming and running around, and ladies be conga lining like it’s going out of style. Hell, that mix even made my hair stand on end! You want proof? I’ll give you proof! I present to you  part 3 in the series Things DDPP Has Done To My Hair, the craziest one yet:

You might need to strap on a seat belt just to lay eyes on this wild ride:

Listen here to have your face melted off (minus “Move Your Feet” by Junior Senior, because apparently Spotify hates killer jams):

It’s almost like she’s a pro at this. OH WAIT, she is. DJ U.N.I.T.Y., thank you from the bottom of my stressed-out heart for turning my bad week around. Those dog days are so over.

Getting a Lil Sumpin’ Sumpin’

Holy crap, ladies. First time DJ Lil Sumpin’ Sumpin’ threw down HARD on Wednesday night. It was like being taken for a ride by a pool shark. Just when I thought I was ahead of the game, she would rip out a jam that had me WORKING the floor.

 

 

DJ Lil Sumpin’ Sumpin’ effortlessly genre hopped like a legitimate bad ass. She had us shaking our shit, punching love, stomping our feet to BOYZ and and howling like she wolves. You know it’s a good time when you turn around and not just one, but THREE ladies are crawling around on the floor. I am also always very delighted to hear a little Amy Winehouse thrown in for good measure. But the most epic moment in her playlist was when she introduced DDPP to the utter delight that is Gay Pimp. I mean, just listen to this and try not to lose your mind from delight.

 

 

On a personal note, this was the first day of DDPP where I was able to make it through a full hour (car accidents suck). I was so happy to be pushed to the limit by you, Sumpin’ Sumpin’! You are my favorite kind of pool shark.  Here’s hoping you DJ again (in those killer leggings) real soon! We all totally dug the ride.

 

 

Cake or Death, Bringing Order to Chaos

DJ Cake or Death is kind of a superhero.

She’s a librarian, so she brings order to chaos every day, Dewey decimal-style.

AND…with those loooong legs and boots made for walkin’ all over you, she has become quite an accomplished go-go dancer. The woman is on her way to being the fourth World Famous Pontani Sister…

BUT WAIT. There’s more. She now has joined the ranks of the dedicated DJ divas who have rocked us TEN TIMES!! For her tenth DJ date, Cake or Death prepared for us a Greatest Hits playlist that had a chronology all its own, but lawdamercy, it was GLORIOUS. I mean, we walked 500 miles, and we felt good doing it…and we sang like a SOUL MAN despite being ladies. Seriously, this playlist brought back the unofficial DDPP choir loud and proud, with harmony.

Better yet, listen in:

 

Now, a little while back, this here blogger made her first playlist as a den mama, and in it, I dedicated a song to each of the other den mamas. But I got Unity’s wrong. See, I knew—I KNEW—that there was a tune that made her fiercest moves bust out, but I couldn’t remember it. So I chose a Whitney Houston song for Unity, because Unity’s got some Houstonesque pipes in that throat of hers. BUT…THIS. THIS HERE. THIS is the song I’d choose for Unity if I could do it all again. Because, GIRL. I mean, DANG. She sure brought it today!

DESTINY’S CHILD, LOSE MY BREATH

Meanwhile, because we were only seven (plus two den mamas), there was lots of space to get down. For me, that usually means a fall on my groovethang. I just get so excited to try out things I can’t do when there’s less space that… well…I end up horizontal. But this time, Cake or Death had my back, and I stayed vertical the whole time. It was a DDPP miracle!

I have faith that someday, our dear Miz Librarian Go-Go Dancer Cake or Death will have her own action figure, but with better hair and wardrobe than this (Sorry, Nancy Pearl, no disrespect…). Until then, may she continue to grace us with her groovy playlists and her sweet go-go moves.

Dance Out Your Mommy Issues

Best time to explore your Mommy issues?  DDPP!!  Dance out those labor pains, thug advice, gut wrenching guilt trips and any other miscellaneous hangups right here with us.  Our Mama-Mix-A-Lot on Wednesday was regular dance hound DJ LONESTAR who happens to be pregnant with a baby girl a.k.a. Our Youngest DDPPer!  As a pregnant mama with a girl in the womb myself, I was right there with her on thoughts / fears of of child birth and raising a GIRL.  This mix was sweaty and cathartic, funny and empowering.  Just what we all needed.

Maybe she’ll be just like ME? Maybe she’ll be my antithesis.  Feels like she’s having her own DDPP in my UTE…or maybe she is intentionally crushing my soul?  I can’t wait to love and nurture her in ways that I wish I was loved and nurtured…but she’ll eventually be 13 and I’ll want to strangle her.  Mrs. Hannigan will take good care of her at the orphanage, right?

Will she LOOK like me?  Will she be my doppelgänger?  Will she look like someone I know?  Will she be a spittin’ image of Den Mother Catherine / DJ Ssssnake?  Please say YES!

We all felt connected in our womanhood, motherhood and all things GIRL this Wednesday.  With women like us for moms, our daughters are BOUND to be smart, courageous, and incredible…and hopefully doing The Worm right out of the birth canal!  Cheers to you baby mama Lonestar and all of the strong DDPP women out there!

 

ALWAYS Trust a Big Butt and a Smile

Ok, don’t get me wrong. DJ Bell  Biv deHo doesn’t have a big butt. It’s totally the perfect size. It’s like…you know, not fat, but PHAT. Like that. Wait…let me put it this way. What I’m trying to say here is…ALWAYS TRUST DJ BELL BIV DEHO’S PLAYLISTS.

Seriously, this rookie DJ injected us with some dance poison! When her namesake song came on, everyone in the room was all like:

What else did you miss if you were outside enjoying the sunshine (whatever. like it was cold for too long or something.) instead of inside enjoying the dancing and darkness? I’m glad you asked! I now present to you part 2 of the illustrious series Things DDPP Has Done To My Hair:

Even a headband couldn’t hold that shit down! What else did you miss…let’s see, how about me trying to do all the choreography I could possibly remember from Love On Top during the freakin’ warmup? Screw warming up, my body said! I need to spin around like I’m wearing a leotard and a spangled sailor cap! You also only missed a room full of ladies belting out pretty much every song in the entire last half of the playlist. You just missed DJ AWOL spontaneously double-high-fiving THE ENTIRE STUDIO. And you may have missed pretty much every dancing lady in attendance going more apeshit over Macklemore than Tyra Banks goes over Vaseline.

Which brings me to an executive decision. I know, I just know, that at some point in the not-so-distant past few years that one of these here den mothers named Robyn the DDPP Artist of the Year (even though I couldn’t find the blog post to prove it). And ladies, I know we’re not even halfway through 2013, but I’m gonna go ahead and do it…Macklemore is so totally DDPP Chicago’s 2013 Artist of the Year.

Whether you think Mackleless is Macklemore or not, that dude’s infectious music is an ever-present crowd-pleaser on our dance floor. Plus I mean, come on…he made everyone actually not want to fast forward through the musical guest on SNL for the first time in years. And you know he don’t judge NOBODY. Especially on the dance floor.

So that’s it. That’s all you missed. Just this fucking fantastic playlist from the fucking fantastic DJ Bell Biv deHo.

Oh you want to listen to it on Spotify? Ok. We can do that for you, because we live in the future!

Now you can re-live all the magic of DJ Bell Biv deHo in the comfort of your own everywhere. Thanks, DJ, for this musical gift that keeps on giving!

DJ Chelles Belles and Infinite Ron Swanson.

First of all, let’s note that in the last week, we had TWO DJs whose names are a tribute to AC/DC. What is it about those Aussies? True story: when I was a freshman in college (long before cameraphones or digital cameras or anything that would easily allow me to upload photographic evidence for you), I traveled to Louisville, KY to meet up with a friend and attend an all ages Yo La Tengo show. When we arrived, the marquee at the Toy Tiger (which was a natty tiger sipping a martini) proclaimed: YO LA TENGO/HELL’S BELLES AC/DC TRIBUTE. My 18-year-old self, who was still a bit of an indie shit, was horrified at the thought that my precious Hoboken trio was having to share a bill with, as it turned out, an all lady tribute band that was playing in an adjoining space right before the night’s main event: mud wrestling. My 35-year-old self of present day, for the record, would have definitely found a way to see all three.

ANYWAY. Back to Wednesday night, where we saw DJ Chelles Belles make a triumphant return to the studio with a playlist so polished, so rockin’, so cool that she was kind of like if the tiger from the Toy Tiger had hopped onstage with Helles Belles AND Yo La Tengo. (FULL CIRCLE, Y’ALL.) When we asked DJ Chelles Belles if she had anything to say about her mix, she initially replied that it was “inspired by…nothing!” Now, as we all well know, Jerry Seinfeld was able to milk that concept for nine seasons.

 

 

But one look at our DJ’s phone case made it clear what ACTUALLY served as the inspiration for this playlist: the one, the only Ron Swanson.

 

Sure, he might not SEEM like the most obvious muse for Dance Dance Party Party. He’s a bit of a loner (“When people get a little too chummy with me I like to call them by the wrong name to let them know I don’t really care about them.”). He has difficulty accessing his feelings (“Crying: acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon.”). And perhaps most horrifyingly of all, he doesn’t like cats (“Any dog under fifty pounds is a cat and cats are useless.”)!

 

But as any fan of Parks & Recreation knows, underneath that mustache and bravado lies the heart of a true dancer. I have to imagine if he’d been in the studio last week, this is the REAL Ron Swanson we would’ve seen:

 

Infinite Ron Swanson.

 

Behold the playlist that would’ve had Ron Swanson losing his tiny hat!

 

 

 

We will get our POP on when we want.

And there is no shame in our game!  Last Sunday we all let our inner POP Princess out to dance for that glorious hour that is DDPP.  We all let our hair down, grabbed our hair brushes (ok our figurative ones), sang into the mirror & just let it all out on the dance floor.  Dj Hellz Bellz led the way with POP music masterpiece.

Imagine the room darker & more ladies in it and you get the gist.  Well, this playlist did definitely raise HELLZ & kept true to its namesake. With hits from Olly Murs to Jackson 5, and Miley Cyrus to Katy Perry, this week’s hot ‘Hellz Bellz’ playlist kept the dance floor at the perfect temperature – on fire!

We just couldn’t stop dancing & getting down with our bad selves…

Check the play list here & remember to POP it out this week:

“Ignition” by R. Kelly
“Dance with Me Tonight” by Olly Murs
“Whenever, Wherever” by Shakira
“Bye, Bye Love” by Simon and Garfunkel
“What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction
“Breakout” by Miley Cyrus
“Fun, Fun, Fun” by The Beach Boys
“Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry
“Come on Over” by Christina Aguilera
“Country Girl” by Luke Bryan
“That Thing You Do!” from the movie That Thing you Do
“I Think I’m in Love” by Jessica Simpson
“Twist and Shout” by The Beatles
“Toxic” by Britney Spears
“ABC” by The Jackson 5
“Escape” by Enrique
“Hello” by Dragonette
“Give Your Heart a Break” by Demi Lovato
“It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette

See you on the dance floor.