‘Undulating’ is the word that best describes the floor of ‘The Dance Factory,’ a venue for young and inspiring influencers to produce content in an environment designed explicitly for that purpose. The influencers, who I assume pay through the nose to be on the floor (the actual pricing is discussed during in-person meetings only), move below the area meant for visitors, like me, who pay slightly less, but still quite a bit, to witness the whole thing in action.
We are not allowed to record, for obvious reasons. This would be like snatching wieners from the water vat at the hot dog factory. The sausage doesn’t belong to us. We might get hurt trying to take it. The meat isn’t even finished. It might make us sick.
So we watch, from out bird’s eye view as people perform careful dances or stunning displays of parkour in rooms meant to look like other places entirely. A man reclines in the first class seat of a common airplane. Another brings his phone close to a dinner he’s eating in the capsule-style sleeping room of a cross-country train.
The group I’m touring with is random and diverse, but among them is a teenage pair- brother and sister, I think, or boyfriend and girlfriend. Not my business. What is sort of my business is the context they bring to the visit. Our guide only speaks about the facilities, which, I suppose, is why I’m here. They talk non-stop about the people below us, minor celebrities and frenemies with beef. Twice, the tour guide has to ask them to refrain from calling out to people they recognize. The teens want so badly to be on the floor that I want it for them. Passion is healthy, right?
When I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass, I remember I’m not the image of respectability. That my life has gone off the rails for something that may have been passion, once, but is now an entrenched duty with no purpose or end. The rails seem fairly distant now. I’m not sure my wheels would even sync to the tracks.
‘There are numerous instances of stupid people digging where they shouldn’t and being rewarded with oil or buried treasure or labyrinthine tunnels with historical value. With much of the earth churned already, those happy accidents occur with a bit more subtlety, and ‘The Dance Factory’ has all the tells.
The name, for instance, was clearly chosen by somebody of a generation that is far removed from the zeitgeist. It is neither edge, nor wholesome, nor even ironically ‘cringe’ enough to be a business associated with Gen Z or younger, and this checks out. The owners are boomers, already rich from being born at the right time and with the right skin color. In the few interviews they’ve agreed to, Michelle and Leon Tach express the good sense that the further they are away from the operational side of ‘The Dance Factory,’ the better. They would ruin the ‘vibe,’ Leon is quoted as saying, and the word ‘vibe’ exits his mouth with the same polite distaste of a man who has only recently tried sushi and found he prefers his fish cooked.
The Tachs are quite comfortable in acknowledging that some of the content produced at ‘The Dance Factory’ is questionable. They justify the output by indicating that the far-left and the far-right political banter made, there, is equivalent in volume and that it’s all largely drowned out by the fluffy dance stuff and the ASMR that sometimes borders on erotic.
Leon shivers at this. “Can’t stand the whispering stuff,” he says, “Give me the dance over the whispers any day.”’
In the basement of ‘The Dance Factory’ there is a room with the exact dimensions of the one above, the one with the facades. This is a quieter room, a place with cubicles and ample charging stations and some nice looking computers that go largely ignored. Here is where the influencers go to cut and edit the content that, in its final form, appears effortless.
“Still think you want to go into this line of work?” The father of the teens is frowning through the window. He strikes me as the sort of man that works in an office like this.
The teens nod and the tour ends at a mandatory gift shop.
-traveler
