This year, a great Washington monument turns 90. It’s the Spanish Ballroom, a dance ballroom just outside of Washington, D.C. The Spanish Ballroom is where, every week, people swing, waltz, and contra dance.

In terms of democracy, the pursuit of happiness, and pure fun, the Spanish Ballroom is as important as any official government building in the Nation’s Capitol. As journalist Barbara Ehrenreich notes in her book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, dancing has often been a way for culture to express ”collective ecstasy,” often against those who would suppress them. Collective dance is a way to defy the bureaucrats and bluenoses intent on controlling human expression.

It has never been needed more than in 2023, as we wake up from the blanket of buzzkill that was the COVID pandemic .

As Ehrenreich argues in her book, dancing at the Spanish Ballroom, in concerts, and at Rio’s Carnival are expressions of something that has very old roots, predating organized religion and even capitalism. The poet Robert Pinsky called such activity ”communal though ungoverned, and anti-hierarchical though ancient.” It can be seen in everything from the dancing rituals of Africa to the waves of dancers at a modern rave.

Totalitarian systems cannot stand such expressions of independent expression. The Nazis actually had an order detailing exactly how much jazz would be tolerated in the Third Reich: “On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated; so-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10 percent syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the music of the barbarian races and conducive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs).”

That sounds dismayingly similar to the absurd and microscopic bylaws that governed us during the COVID nightmare.

I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I got the shot and am willing to give the government some leeway during a health emergency. Still, the hysteria and micromanaging during COVID got completely out of control. I won’t ever forget the video of a young and healthy female track runner collapsing because she was wearing a mask and could not get enough oxygen.

The Spanish Ballroom was also closed for much of the pandemic. When we reopened at first, masks were required. Swing dancing, one of the most aerobic activities on Earth, does not go well with masks.

That requirement has been dropped, and the Ballroom is ready for its 90th birthday.

Everyone, especially young people, should celebrate. In the last few years, teen mental health has taken a nosedive. Dancing can help.

I started swing dancing in the early 1990s, shortly after I quit drinking. I was an athlete and the sudden lack of booze left me feeling isolated, sometimes depressed, and with a lot of excess energy — not unlike how I felt during the COVID lockdowns.

One night I stopped by Glen Echo Park in Maryland, which features the famous Spanish Ballroom.

I found some great instructors and learned the Lindy Hop, a dance that was born in Harlem in the 1920s, at the then-famous Savoy Ballroom on the corner of 140th Street and Lenox Avenue. It was life-affirming and continues to bring me joy. On the dance floor, we are all equals, bound by the joy of expressing ourselves as souls independent of any governmental control.

Dancing also fosters community.

In his book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day, sociologist Ray Oldenburg examines the broad social, spiritual, and psychological benefits of "third places," those spots outside of work and home that offer solace from the rat race and requirements of day-to-day life.

These places serve as democratic meeting spots and encourage the manners and self-restraint that govern them.

In third places, writes Oldenburg, a natural kind of "leveling" takes place. Unlike work, there is no hierarchy of status and power: "Those not high on the totems of accomplishment or popularity are enjoined, accepted, embraced, and enjoyed despite their 'failings' in their career or the marketplace. There is more to the individual than his or her status indicates."

Formal dance halls are also places where common-sense etiquette reins. If you ask a woman to dance and she says no, it is inappropriate to pursue the matter any further.

In Swing, Bop and Hand Dancing, a documentary about the history of swing and hand dancing, and modern offshoot of swing done primarily in black communities, Howard University dance historian Beverly Lindsay sums it up nicely. "The benefits of swing go far beyond just learning cool moves," she says. "In the old days of swing, there were entire rituals surrounding the dance. Men went and picked up their dates, then escorted them to the dance. They learned how to dress up, and how to behave. They learned how to ask a girl to dance, lead her onto the dance floor, then, at the end of the song, return her from where she had come.”

In the post-COVID world, everyone, but especially teens, just wants to return to where we had come from. The starting point may be the dance floor.

Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of  The Devil's Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi . He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.