For as long as I can remember, I have loved to dance — singing, too, but a little off-key. The report card for my four-year-old self noted that he ”likes to play the drum and sing alone.”

Dancing was a way to express the joy that I felt through movement — either with a partner or by myself. When I was a teen, dancing was the way I first held a girl in my arms. Dancing class was perfect for that and led to deb parties and dancing until two in the morning.

It all started with my parents. Our house had a split-level living room with a stage-like level and a much larger, lower level, three steps down. My father, widely known for his "two-step," would literally roll up the rug, put records on the Victrola and hand out maracas, tambourines and other noise makers. The guests would arrive and the dancing would begin. I remember getting out of bed late at night and sitting at the top of the stairs to listen to the music. I would fall asleep to the sound of show tunes and popular songs of the day.

As I began to listen to the radio and rock and roll and ignore my homework, I would dance in my room by myself to the sound of the theme song for Frank X. Feller whose show began on Philly’s WIBG Radio 99 at 10 p.m. every night.

In the summer, I would go to dances on the Vineyard.

At age 14, I was taken to the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club by my mother, who signed me up as a junior member. She reminisced how she used to dance at the Casino, the two-story building on the beach that was now the yacht club clubhouse. The Casino had been part of the long-gone Bayside Hotel. I was amazed to think that I would be dancing on the same floor as she had 40 years earlier. Back then she would wear a thin cardboard dance card that hung from her wrist on a ribbon along with a pencil. Her card had 10 numbered spaces on it and would fill up quickly as she danced the night away.

The first dances I attended at the yacht club were held on the second floor, exactly where she had danced the Charleston and the Lindy. The floor would shake, rattle and roll, nearly collapsing under the thunderous stomping and jumping, hastening its demise two years later.

Music was sometimes provided by a band of our contemporaries — Chico Huff on bass, Nicky Huff on drums, “Red Bear” on saxophone and Will Luckey on guitar. As we grew older and got our driver’s licenses, our dance venues expanded to the Edgartown Yacht Club, Chilmark Community Center and the Casino at West Chop.

In 1966, a garage on Beach Road in Vineyard Haven became the summer home to a group of energetic 17-year-olds called the Ogres. The Ogres would sleep until late into the afternoon in their second-floor rooms, then roll down to play at night. They played four nights a week right into Labor Day. It was rock and roll heaven all summer long and our favorite place to go. Fifty years later in 2016, band members Ken Griffen and Fred Domont got the original group back together for a special reunion at the Lampost.

As we entered college, the music of the sixties changed the nature of Island dances. The music got freakier and harder to dance to. One night, I went to a dance at the Chilmark Community Center. When I walked onto the large auditorium-like dance floor, it was so dark I could barely see. The music was loud and directionless, and a bouncing mix of colors and shapes being projected onto a movie screen spilled out over the walls and ceiling. No one was dancing. There on the dance floor instead, people were sitting cross legged in small groups and circles, others were just lying on their backs staring at the ceiling. The air was lightly tinged with sweet blue smoke. The '60s had clearly come into full flower on the Vineyard.

The music shifted again in the '70s and The Seafood Shanty was the place to go. Every night waitresses would sing for our suppers. One waitress we all knew named Lucy had just graduated from Vassar and loved Billie Holliday. She would bring us our drinks, then suddenly look over her shoulder to the piano in the corner and say, “Gotta go now.” Then she would sit down at the piano and belt out her songs as we all clapped and cheered. When her set ended, she’d be back at our table, and say, “Okay, now what would you like to eat?”

Today the dances are fewer, but you can still find them. The Ritz in Oak Bluffs, for example, has live music most every night during the summer. It’s where I had a memorable first dance with my sweetheart, an event that we still talk wistfully about 21 years later. Johnny Hoy and the Bluefish, an Island favorite, has already begun playing his summer-long gig there every Wednesday night. The music starts at 8 p.m. (give or take a minute). I look forward to seeing see you there.

David Lott lives in Vineyard Haven.