Freedom
Northern Soul is an underground music movement which originated in the 1960s in the clubs and ballrooms of northern England where predominantly working-class young people would dance through the night to rare soul records imported from the USA. Characterised by energetic acrobatic dancing “on the fours” of the music’s backbeat, dancers would first sprinkle talc on the sprung wooden floor to enable better movement; the first person to dance leaving their trace, soon to be obliterated by the hundreds that would follow. The phenomenon of Northern Soul proved a liberation for women; dancers performed as individuals, not as couples, leaving girls free to dance on their own without the usual rituals associated with the ballroom dance where men took the lead.