by RAF KATIGBAK

Dressed head to toe in white, it’s hard not to mistake Kevin Disco and Matt Howze for evangelists. In many ways, they are. As Dance Disaster Movement, the Long Beach duo is currently casting out the demons of indie rock and hardcore conventionality on their month-long tour across the continent. Armed with blistering keyboard blasts, angular guitar twangs and relentlessly pulsing live drumbeats, DDM are out to spread the dance-rock gospel. Live, the power of their sound (which intersects somewhere between the rigid and raw electro keyboards of San Francisco’s Numbers and punk disco of New York’s the Rapture) is magnified 10-fold by lead singer Disco’s James Brown-on-Ritalin on-stage antics. The Mirror recently got a chance to touch base with the leaders of the Movement, Kevin and Matt, to see if they practised what they preached.

Mirror: So how disastrous does the Dance Disaster Movement get?

Matt Howze: Well, Kevin’s actually got staph infections from rolling around on the ground in dirty-ass clubs. During this dance called “the Seizure,” he got cut and his elbow swelled up to three times its size.

Kevin Disco: It actually wasn’t from the Seizure, it was from doing a windmill on the floor. Now I’ll only do the windmill on a big stage that looks clean. Not on the floor out by the crowd, near the broken beer bottles and pools of hepatitis.

M: Which dances are officially recognized by the Movement?

KD: Any dance is recognized, we just also want people to create new dances.

MH: Yeah, we love all dancing.

M: All dancing? What about early ’90s dances like the Running Man or that Arsenio Hall “stir the soup” dance?

MH: Oh, hell yeah! That’s fuckin’ all I know how to do, those and the Smurf.

M: Okay, so what’s the Dance Disaster Movement stance on vogueing?

MH: Vogueing? Well, that is dancing, but it’s a little too posh… it could be the only one that we exclude.

M: The only one? Dances like the macarena are okay?

MH: Honestly, if somebody has the balls to get up there and do the macarena, then fuckin’ hell yeah!

With Blood Brothers and These Arms As Snakes at l’X on Wednesday, July 16, 7:30pm, $13

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