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Gay liberation-minded Hercules and Love Affair is in serious thrall to the dance sounds of the past.

In the middle of the sweaty, happy crowd dancing Wednesday at the Echo, a man in a straw boater and fancy silk cravat held aloft a majestic yellow fan. Imaginative onlookers might have thought it was the Spirit of Disco, come down to bless Hercules and Love Affair , the Brooklyn-based ensemble onstage. Embossed, colorful fans were an emblem of early disco, when the subculture still thrived in multiracial, gay-dominated clubs, before it became suburbanized. Dancers used them to beat the heat in time-traveling style.