Dancers, 1991. Courtesy Ferens Gallery.

Artist David Remfry’s fascination with the movements of dancers began when he visited the popular Locarno Club in Hull City Hall.

Now the Ferens Gallery in Hull is exhibiting Remfry’s watercolours from November 12 to January 15 2006, which show how the energy and vibrancy of dancing transcended class-divides and allowed people to discard their inhibitions.

Raised in Hull, Remfry frequently visited the city’s dance halls during the 1950s, where Teddy boys often carried flick-knives and brutal fights were commonplace. When, predictably, a man was stabbed one night, Remfry was shocked at how soon the music started back up once he had been removed from the dance-floor.

'A' Class Girls, 1986. Courtesy Ferens Gallery.

His large-scale paintings are full of bawdy human interaction and intimate glimpses of revellers amidst the flustered party scenes. There are images of partygoers whispering in a crowd, dancers separating from one another, and women lasciviously smoking.

In a recent interview, Remfry told Alanna Heiss, director of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre/ Museum of Modern Art Affiliate in New York, “I’m obsessed with people, with us, how we behave together. The things that link us, what we do together, what we do after hours, after a drink or two at clubs, at bars and at parties... how we ‘distract ourselves’, as Francis Bacon put it; I love observing all this and recording it in a painting. In the process, I hope to discover something of what we are.”

Dancers, undated. Courtesy Ferens Gallery.

Remfry’s subject matter is decidedly urban, and his vivid watercolours illuminate the social context of the dancers. Some of his earliest attempts at sketching the elaborate movements of the dancers took place at the tea dances held at the Hammersmith town hall and the Roseland Ballroom in New York, where he now lives.

In the Dancers catalogue Dore Ashton describes the Roseland as the “only classless society I would ever know. There, no matter how lowly your daily life, if you were an elegant dancer you were an aristocrat.”

Untitled Study 2000. Courtesy Ferens Gallery.

Ashton continues: “Dishwashers and janitors became princes and elderly retired chorus girls, princesses. Not only that but the youthful princes often selected the elderly princesses solely on the basis of their superior aptitudes on the dance floor.”

By painting the dancing crowd, Remfry manages to highlight the dancers’ individual characteristics, and he benevolently observes all walks of life with affection and humour.