num_pages: 600
description: As the 1970s gave way to the 80s New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity intensity and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the citys subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art performance video and film. Interviewing DJs party hosts producers musicians artists and dancers Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco post-punk and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality interaction and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification Reaganomics corporate intrusion and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.
language: English
title: Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983
publisher: Duke University Press Books