Published in the April 2026 print issue of ELLE Canada
Illustrations by Robb Jamieson
I stood in the doorway and looked around. Love Inc.’s video for “Broken Bones” was playing on a large screen stretched over the far corner of the gymnasium. Europop thumped euphorically through the speakers. Some kids danced wildly while others huddled under the basketball hoops. The air smelled like CK One and smoke machines. Colourful spotlights rotated, freeze-framing happy faces. My body glitter shimmered and accented my Posh Spice-inspired ensemble: black tank, green mini, chunky platforms and a slick of cinnamon lip balm. My friend Hannah’s look—pink top and white cargos—was more Baby. It was the biggest bash of the year, but, then again, anytime the MuchMusic Video Dance Party came to town felt important. It was 1998, and it seemed like everyone was there—at least 300 teenagers were packed into the gym at Vancouver’s Kerrisdale Community Centre.
Back then, the MuchMusic Video Dance Party turned a school dance into something transformative. Launched in 1985, the service, founded by Merv Buchanan and branded by “The Nation’s Music Station,” took over high schools and community centres across Canada. Every event was a larger-than-life manifestation of the music-television channel, catered perfectly to its young audience. “Party veejays” drove up and down the country to host them; sometimes actual MuchMusic VJs made appearances. Video dances were available in every province, with party fleets based in 16 locations, including Vancouver, Saskatoon, Montreal and Halifax.
Buchanan created an early version of the events in 1983. Music videos were rising in cultural relevance, revolutionizing the relationship between music and fans. Inspired after seeing MTV on a wall-mounted screen at a hotel, Buchanan started his company, Videomax, advertising video dances to schools in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. When MuchMusic debuted in 1984, he had the idea of joining forces with the new network. It was a dream pairing and an instant success, with an average of 1,000 bookings a year. The demand stayed that high until the MuchMusic Video Dance Party’s run ended in 2019 due to a change in programming focus.
Whether a video dance was in a city or a small town, it was a big deal. In 2013, in Musquodoboit Harbour, N.S., Brooke Leahaay won a Video Dance Party contest for Eastern Shore District High School. She was graduating, and the school hadn’t held a dance in seven years. MuchMusic captured it all for a New.Music.Live. episode. “My school is just going to be so excited,” says Leahaay, beaming into the camera. “We’re just going to go insane.” Leahaay and her friends got ready in her bedroom for the night ahead. One curled her hair; another straightened hers. They swept eyeshadow on one another’s lids. A limousine delivered the girls to the gym, which was packed with classmates wearing glow bracelets and costumes.
In 2014, the University of Calgary threw a dance party to welcome its first-years, helping them build new connections on shared nostalgia. “I remember going to a MuchMusic Video Dance in the ninth grade,” Ray Anderson, an engineering student, told student-run newspaper The Gauntlet. “And there was nothing I wanted to do more in my first week of university than relive that experience.” The newspaper remarked that for attendees, “slipping back into the environment was incredibly easy”—even the adolescent awkwardness came back. Arts student Sarah Dell noted that she liked how “nobody quite knew how to interact with each other, so we just jumped up and down, fist-pumping the entire time. When the DJ told us to scream, we screamed.”
Sure, music videos made dances more exciting than some tunes blasting on overhead speakers might have. The MuchMusic Video Dance Party meant more than that, though. It was a special experience shared by Canadian teenagers from coast to coast—approximately 10 million of them, all told. The backdrop to countless unforgettable nights, it was unique to the generation growing up on the Canadian channel. Music videos were a profoundly influential art form, having a part in everything from setting fashion trends to raising aware- ness about social issues. And MuchMusic was what we turned to for not only music and videos but all things relevant to young Canadians, whether breakdancing or politics. The MuchMusic Video Dance Party was an embodiment of all that—music-video culture and our youth culture—and a reflection of the times.
Canadians still reminisce about it. There are Dance Party playlists on Spotify. CBC’s Son of a Critch has an entire episode based around it. “It’s not just any dance party,” one character declares. “It’s a Video Dance Party.” Online, comment sections are stacked with memories about how momentous it felt, the music played, the slow dances to Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”
At the end of my own Video Dance Party experience, the lights turned on and the screen went white. Kids trickled out the back doors to the parking lot, where cars were lined up. The sky was dark and already twinkling. Hannah and I found each other and linked arms. “Oh, my God,” she said, breathless. “That was the best.” Her voice was hoarse from singing so loudly, and my cheeks were pink from dancing. There was glitter everywhere. It really was the best.
Yasmine Shemesh 