Dance Party

When Derek Miller moved to New York from Florida in 2008, he did the usual thing: He tried to start up a conversation with every girl he met in a bar. Only Miller wasn't on the make, really. The guitarist and producer was looking to hook up with a female singer to collaborate with on a new project he conceived of as being "confrontational, but not macho. " "I grew up playing hard-core, and I really love the incredible excitement that comes with that in the live setting," says Miller, who's one half of the pulverizing Brooklyn noise-pop buzz band Sleigh Bells, talking on the phone this week.

No one will dispute the assertion that the Beatles and The Who are classic rock bands; now get ready to include the Happy Mondays and St. Etienne in the rock canon. "This is my classic rock," says Andy Selke of the wildly varied British pop and dance music at the Sorted! dance party last weekend at the Trocadero in Center City. "Someone should do this every week. " While The Who's "Can't Explain" drew a crowd to the dance floor, Sorted! courts those who cut their teeth on the Cure and Depeche Mode.

You hardly needed a seat at the Peco Energy Jazz Festival's Latin Jazz Dance Party. A handkerchief or towel would have served better on Saturday night. On the bandstand were the legendary Latin-jazz leader Manny Oquendo and Libre and a second band headed by singer Johnny Pacheco, a founding father of salsa. Both bands drew inspiration from Cuban music, but Oquendo flowed into a Latin jazz thing that glorified improvisation while Pacheco mined a more popular vein. At the party in the vast ballroom of the Convention Center, there was so much Spanish in the air that reverse colonization seemed to be occurring.

Dance music from various parts of the world - throbbing rhythms with such names as Afrobeat, reggae, juju, funk, soca, go-go, jive, highlife and congo - will be featured when Randall Grass' "World Beat Dance Party" is presented tonight at Revival, 22 S. Third St., starting at 10 p.m. The "new music-dance band" sounds of the local band Experimental Products will be presented live at Revival in a multimedia show tomorrow night at 12:30 a.m. ...

Frank Cerami knows how to keep the party jumping with a unique mix of old and new music during his weekly "Sunday Night Retro Dance Party" at Michael's Cafe in Bensalem. "Dance music today is as good as the dance music of the '80s," says the DJ. Cerami uses the hit song "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley as an example. "Crazy" is very reminiscent of early '70s soul. (See a preview of the Gnarls Barkley show on Page 15). Cerami has his hands full with the many musical tastes he tries to satisfy.

On record, acclaimed Baltimore-based futurist Dan Deacon sounds like Philip Glass on Red Bull. A lot of Red Bull. Live, he resembles nothing so much as a hip, wise-cracking camp counselor DJing a dance party for people who can't really dance. His name may not ring a bell, but for people under 30 he is Santa Claus with a wave-function generator. And Thursday night he came to town - Union Transfer, to be exact - after a three-year absence from area stages, to promote America , his album-length meditation on the national soul.

Police will meet tomorrow with the manager of the "Whistle 3" rave dance party held last weekend at the South Jersey Expo Center to find out what went wrong. Officials will discuss how to prevent circumstances like the ones that led to the hospitalization of 22 people for drug-related illnesses and the arrest of three. The rave, which featured hip-hop, house and jungle music, began at 7:45 p.m. Saturday and lasted until 7 a.m. Sunday. Between 13,000 and 14,000 visitors paid about $35 to enter, police said.

At Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill in King of Prussia, the American Bandstand Regulars Alumni Association threw itself a dance party to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the year "American Bandstand" went national. The party brought together regular dancers from 1952 through 1989.

Echale ganas, roughly translated, is Mexican Spanish for "do your best. " Those customary parting words still ring in the ears of thousands of Mexican immigrants who made their way to Southeastern Pennsylvania in the last decade. From 2002 to 2008, local filmmaker Laurence Salzmann made repeated trips to Puebla state in southern Mexico, the rural birthplace of many of them, seeking to understand what drew them to el Norte. The result is Echele Ganas — A Life Left Behind, an unblinking look at Mexico's faded farmland and the relentlessness of immigrant ambition.

On record, acclaimed Baltimore-based futurist Dan Deacon sounds like Philip Glass on Red Bull. A lot of Red Bull. Live, he resembles nothing so much as a hip, wise-cracking camp counselor DJing a dance party for people who can't really dance. His name may not ring a bell, but for people under 30 he is Santa Claus with a wave-function generator. And Thursday night he came to town - Union Transfer, to be exact - after a three-year absence from area stages, to promote America , his album-length meditation on the national soul.

Echale ganas, roughly translated, is Mexican Spanish for "do your best. " Those customary parting words still ring in the ears of thousands of Mexican immigrants who made their way to Southeastern Pennsylvania in the last decade. From 2002 to 2008, local filmmaker Laurence Salzmann made repeated trips to Puebla state in southern Mexico, the rural birthplace of many of them, seeking to understand what drew them to el Norte. The result is Echele Ganas — A Life Left Behind, an unblinking look at Mexico's faded farmland and the relentlessness of immigrant ambition.

IT COULD HAVE been a scene from any of the past six decades: Contemporary, beat-heavy music blares over a sound system while dozens of Delaware Valley young people shimmy and shake, their movements captured by cameras for a TV audience. This tableau, which unfolded on an early spring morning in the Play 2 Video Arcade at Chickie's & Pete's near the South Philly sports complex, was part of the taping of an episode of "Party Rockers Tween Scene. " The dance party airs at 11 a.m. Saturdays on NBC Philadelphia Nonstop (Comcast 248, Verizon Fios 460, over-the-air 10.2)

Hundreds of people gathered at the original home of "American Bandstand" in West Philadelphia on Saturday to recreate the televised dance party hosted by Dick Clark who died Wednesday. "My biggest thrill was dancing with Patti Page," said Tommy Davis, 70, of Jenkintown, who danced on the show from 1965 to 1967. "Dick pulled me down from the bleachers," Clark, 82, died in Los Angeles of a massive heart attack. He was 82. The death of the man affectionately known as the "world's oldest teenager" prompted scores of former dancers and "American Bandstand" fans to file into Studio B at the old WFIL-TV station.

WEST PHILLY native Dotty Bradley's first memory of when "Bandstand" was filmed in Philadelphia is stuffing her bra with socks when she was 11 to make herself look older so that she could sneak into the show with her cousin. That was when Bob Horn hosted the show. But the personality whom Bradley, 68, and her cousin Barbara Marcen, 72, remember rocking with best is Dick Clark. "I used to dance right under the podium," Bradley said, beaming, as she swayed to the beat at SugarHouse Casino, where local music icon Jerry Blavat dedicated his weekly dance party to the late "American Bandstand" host on Wednesday night.

West Philly native Dotty Bradley's first memory of when "Bandstand" was filmed in Philadelphia is stuffing her bra with socks when she was 11 to make herself look older so she could sneak into the show with her cousin. That was when Bob Horn hosted the show. But the personality who Bradley, 68, and her cousin Barbara Marcen, 72, remember rocking with best is Dick Clark. "I used to dance right under the podium," Bradley said, beaming as she swayed to the beat at SugarHouse Casino, where local music legend Jerry Blavat dedicated his weekly dance party to the late "American Bandstand" host on Wednesday night.

CITY COUNCILMAN Curtis Jones Jr. plans to submit a bill to a Council committee today proposing that Robin Hood Dell East be renamed the Georgie Woods Entertainment Center. Woods, an iconic Philadelphia disc jockey, entertainer and civil-rights activist, died in 2005 at the age of 78. The bill will be presented to Council's committee on parks and recreation, cosponsored by Council President Darrell Clarke, Cindy Bass, Kenyatta Johnson, Marian Tasco and Jannie Blackwell. "Georgie Woods was a progressive, forward-thinking entertainer who engaged the community on the issues," Jones said, "and it would be an honor to have the grand theater named after him. " Woods spun mostly R&B records at WHAT and WDAS radio from the early '50s, introducing Philadelphians to many famous singers and musical groups, including Sam Cooke, Jerry Butler, the Righteous Brothers, the Osmond Brothers the Beatles and numerous others.

Zoe Strauss is a genius - not at photography, at which she's merely talented, but at marketing. She developed one brilliant concept, an annual outdoor exhibition of her work under the I-95 elevated expressway in South Philadelphia, then parlayed that into inclusion in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and now into a mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This level of professional success would take most artists far longer,...

Thirty-year-old Canadian Joel Zimmerman probably didn't start life wanting to lead a nation of techno-house fanatics to distraction. Heck, there was barely a nation of electro-fans to speak of when the Ontario-born producer began making music. And once he strapped on a giant mouse head, adopting a new persona, things changed. He became larger than life, bigger than the catchy but minimal progressive house sounds and laser-filled shows he became known for. Deadmau5 (pronounced dead mouse )